


SoulxSoul

by harinezumi_kun



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Drama, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-23
Updated: 2011-12-04
Packaged: 2017-11-08 05:46:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 38,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/439805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harinezumi_kun/pseuds/harinezumi_kun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nino doesn't think he's crazy, but he doesn't tell anyone about Satoshi anymore. Because how could you tell anyone that you have another person living in your body?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> so, a year and a half...and what a long, strange journey it's been ~ ! thank you to the various betas who have helped me through this monster fic, and the many others who just plain listened to me bitch about it ♥ thanks, also, to everyone who has stuck with this through my very untimely updates and empty promises of promptness -_-;; and to those just joining us: welcome! i hope you enjoyed the ride :)

**Prologue**  
“Kazunari-kun,” the doctor says in soft, measured tones. She always talks like that—soothing, like she’s coaxing a frightened animal out of hiding—and Kazu has always hated it.

“Have you talked to ‘Satoshi’ at all today?” she continues.

_Don’t say his name like that_ , Kazu thinks, but all he says is, “No, ma’am.”

_Liar, liar_ , says an amused voice in his head that is not his own. The doctor is smiling at him gently, and Kazu smiles back for very different reasons.

“That is very good to hear,” she says, riffling through some papers on her small, tidy desk. “That makes it almost…three months. The next step, Kazunari-kun,” and she fixes him with a grave, solicitous stare, “is to admit to yourself that ‘Satoshi’ is just another part of you.”

_Of course he is_ , Kazu thinks, fighting to keep his smile from becoming a smirk.

_Of course I am_ , Satoshi echoes defensively.

“Are you ready for that?” the doctor asks.

“Yes, ma’am, I think I am.”

The woman smiles, so proud of herself. “That’s wonderful. Well, I think that’s all for today. I’ll see you again next week.”

Kazu rises and leaves the room with a bow. As he walks the white, sterile halls of the small psychiatric office, he makes himself quiet and unnoticeable with practiced ease. Not a single person even glances at him as he exits through the waiting area. The receptionist looks up in surprise when she hears the door open and close, but Kazu is already gone.

Once he is outside, he slips on his headphones and turns up his music. It’s just another way of disappearing. No one notices a skinny teenager with an overloud WalkMan and a baggy sweatshirt. He becomes another part of the scenery, blending into the small, worn-down shops and fading paint of this small outshoot of Tokyo. It’s not his neighborhood—he goes to the doctor across town so no one he knows will see him going in and out of a psychiatrist’s office.

_We won’t have to go back after next week_ , Satoshi says, part confidence and part reassurance. Kazu feels the warmth of an unseen arm across his shoulders.

_We will_ , he counters, ever the realist to Satoshi’s optimism, _but we’ve got her convinced now. You saw her face, she thinks she ‘cured’ me._

Kazu feels Satoshi’s assent and walks on in silence. He knows they’re both thinking about what happens next—about spending the rest of their lives pretending to be just Kazu, about never speaking to each other out loud again. It doesn’t feel right, but Kazu knows it’s what they have to do if they want to fit in, and stay out of the doctor’s stuffy little office.

He brushes gently against Satoshi’s presence in his mind—sometimes he can tell what the other boy is thinking, but right now Satoshi has closed himself up. He is there, constant, but muted.

“Mom will be happy, though,” Kazu says, then curses softly when he realizes he was talking aloud. The salaryman he just passed gives him a startled glance and then hurries away.

_Yeah_ , Satoshi agrees, and that single word is weighted with images of his mother’s face streaked with tears, the torn remains of a scribbled note from his father who couldn’t deal with his failing company and his crazy son and just left. It’s only been two weeks, but she’s putting on a brave face for him, so afraid that this kind of trauma will only worsen his condition.

_You’re not a ‘condition’_ , Kazu says reassuringly when he feels more than hears Satoshi’s small, guilty _Sorry_.

“And don’t be sorry,” he whispers aloud because there’s no one around and because the words seem stronger if they’re not just in his head.

“Love me?” and this time it is Satoshi’s voice from Kazu’s lips—just a tad deeper, and the tone is the pleading, unromantic question of a lonely child.

“Love you,” Kazu tells him quietly. He raises his right hand and kisses the palm softly. It is a gesture left over from their childhood, safe and comforting. But they are not children anymore. 

_Okay_ , Kazu says, _you’re my secret now, starting today._

_Okay_ , Satoshi returns.

Kazu walks on, ignoring the chilly autumn breeze that chases him to the train station. From the outside, he looks like a single person, small and hunched and barely there.

But on the inside he knows he will never be alone.

**Chapter One**  
Nino was about six years old the first time he really started to understand that Satoshi wasn’t just someone he had made up.

Looking back when he is older and wiser, he thinks he probably knew all along, but at the time it had been a major realization. He had still been young enough that he didn’t understand the full implications of this, didn’t understand that Satoshi couldn’t talk to other people the same way as Nino talked to him. This had been the first time he had heard “multiple personalities”, whispered from the next room. There had been years of teasing by his classmates, concerned talks with his parents, and the hated trips to the doctor’s office.

For a time, he had believed what everyone was telling him—that he was crazy, that Satoshi wasn’t real. It had been the most painful time in his life, those tortured years when he had done what the doctors said and tried to make Satoshi go away. And for a time, Satoshi had retreated, and left Nino alone in his own head. 

When he finally came to realize that having Satoshi gone was worse, much worse, than having him there, they had made their decision together.

The trips to the doctor had eventually stopped with a little clever acting on Nino’s part, and while it was hard to keep their conversations to themselves, they got better at it with practice. After that, Nino didn’t tell anyone about Satoshi. Because how could you tell anyone that you had another person living in your body?

_You’re not crazy_ , Satoshi had told him, over and over. Eventually Nino came to believe it.

Because it’s not the same as multiple personalities. He read about it, educated himself, and he knows there are major differences. No memory loss, for one. He doesn’t black out, Satoshi doesn’t take over his body. Satoshi is just always there. If Nino lets him, Satoshi can take control—he’s done it a few times when he was up all night gaming and couldn’t stay awake, or when he needed to turn in something halfway decent for art class (something Satoshi was always better at)—but mostly the other boy is content to be an observer, his comments and observations a running monologue in Nino’s head.

For his family, it becomes something he “had trouble with” as a child. It is over, and they never talk about it. After the last doctor’s visit, his mother had moved them all to another school district, so none of his highschool friends know anything about it. And it’s easier that way. Life becomes normal, or as close to normal as possible, and eventually Nino grows up and leaves his home town.

He moves into the heart of the city, where everything is fast and loud and there are too many people, and where no one notices or really cares if you happen to talk to yourself every now and then. He had started out, on his mother’s insistence, as a student at a small art college in the city, but he soon grew bored of it. The music classes were a joke, and even Satoshi said the art classes had too many rules. They decided to drop out, and Nino works a number of odd part-time jobs so he can afford a place to live and enough video games to occupy the rest of his time, and art supplies to occupy Satoshi.

Nino doesn’t tell his mother that he’s dropped out of school, but it’s easy to keep up the charade, especially with Jun around.

Nino met Jun in one of his music classes, some history course that Jun was just taking for the credit requirements, and after they had forged a friendship through long exchanges full of snarky commentary, Jun had grudgingly admitted that he was looking for a roommate.

Jun came from money, but his parents had decided it was time he experienced financial independence and would only pay for his schooling if he paid for his own apartment. As it turns out, this is harder than Jun expected, but Nino is more than happy to fork over half the rent for a whole room to himself and a washing machine he doesn’t have to walk three blocks to get to. And, after he dropped out, Jun was a constant source of school gossip and complaints about homework that Nino could use to keep his mother convinced that he was still a good little college student.

_He’s cute_ , Satoshi had said, only three days after they had moved in. Nino agreed, though he was inexplicably annoyed that Satoshi felt the need to point it out. _He likes you_ , Satoshi insisted, but Nino didn’t respond, letting things play out as they would.

He’s not that surprised when Jun’s bubble of personal space starts to shrink noticeably when they’re alone in the apartment. The younger man starts to feign an interest in Nino’s video games for an excuse to sit next to him in front of the sofa. One night they come home from a party, both a little tipsy, and wind up making out in the kitchen.

It’s not something they really talk about, it’s just something they do when the mood strikes them, something comforting when they are in need of comfort. Satoshi is just glad they have found someone they can be this close to. _Maybe we should tell him_ , Satoshi says, and they come close so many times. But Nino still remembers the look that people would give him, people he thought he was close to, when he told them about Satoshi. He doesn’t want to see that scared, pitying expression on Jun’s face.

After almost a year away from home, Nino is starting to feel safe. The little life he has carved out for himself is simple, but it’s comfortable, and it’s all he really needs. He knows that eventually Jun will graduate and move away, knows that his part-time jobs probably won’t want to keep him on once he passes thirty, but he’ll cross those bridges when he comes to them.

Really, Nino should have known that it couldn’t last. Good things never do.

***

Nino is just leaving his weekend job at the game center. He turns and offers a wave and a wicked grin to Ryo, left all alone to deal with the two dozen teenage girls who just descended on the arcade. The younger man gives him the finger in return, but Nino just laughs.

Once outside, he pulls his scarf up over his nose and huddles into his too-big winter coat.

_It’s not that cold_ , with a quiet laugh.

_It’s freezing_ , Nino retorts, pulling out his cellphone. There’s an email from Jun, and he reads it aloud under his breath.

“Got invited to a group date—it was a senpai so I couldn’t say ‘no’. Be out late. Wait up for me?”

Nino can sense Satoshi’s little grin, but his own mouth twists into a scowl. “Great, he’ll be drunk _and_ horny when he gets home.”

Satoshi just chuckles to himself.

It is a Saturday night, and the streets are crowded with people as Nino makes his way to the nearest subway station. He has been at the game center for the last eight hours, and all he wants to do is spend the rest of the night in front of his PlayStation. The press of humanity doesn’t make it easy, though. Groups of businessmen in suits that were once neat and sharply pressed stumble through the throng, shouting and throwing themselves at highschool girls with bleached hair and too much make-up. Nino dodges the fleeing girls, and as he is half-turned, Satoshi spots something out of the corner of his eye.

_Are those guys following us?_

The words are accompanied by the image of two huddled figures in trench coats, and a memory of a similar pair standing across the street when Nino left the arcade.

_Why would anyone be following us?_ Nino asks doubtfully, but Satoshi’s niggling paranoia is already sneaking into Nino’s own consciousness. He cuts across the street, suddenly, weaving between people on the crowded crosswalk, only looking back over his shoulder once he has reached the far side of the intersection.

And the men are still there, jogging across the street determinedly as the light gets ready to change. A dozen scenarios involving kidnapping, rape, murder, flicker through Nino’s mind. He quashes them immediately. There is no reason for anyone to want to kidnap, rape, or murder him. So he doesn’t run. He waits until he’s come to a crowded, well-lit street corner, finds an empty bench and sits down to wait.

His pursuers pause about a half a block away, uncertain. He sees them put their heads together, apparently deciding what to do—Nino has made it obvious that he’s seen them, and stares in their direction unblinkingly while they decide their next course of action.

The taller man with lighter hair gestures emphatically in Nino’s direction, but his companion makes a sharp, negating motion with one hand. All Nino can see of the second man is the back of a dark head of hair and a pair of sloping shoulders. After some more discussion, they lean back against the building they’re stopped in front of with feigned casualness. Nino rolls his eyes.

A moment later he’s standing in front of them with his arms crossed.

“Can I help you?” he says bluntly.

The pair exchange an uncomfortable glance, apparently undecided about whether or not to acknowledge Nino’s presence. The taller man nods slightly, and they both straighten up.

“Ninomiya Kazunari?” the dark haired man asks, brisk and businesslike.

“Who wants to know?” Nino replies, feeling like someone out of a bad gangster movie.

“My name is Sakurai Sho, and this is my partner, Aiba Masaki. We’ve been watching you for some time, and we’d like to have a word with you.” Sakurai pauses briefly to lick his lips. “And Satoshi.”

Nino’s breath catches in his throat, and every muscle in his body tenses to run. Satoshi is panicking as well, but his thoughts are all jumbled images and broken sentences: _doctors sent them—found us—run, now—don’t make me go—Kazu, no, run—_

Nino clenches his jaw, wraps Satoshi in all the warmth and reassurance he can muster, and stands his ground.

“How do you know about that?” he aks quietly.

A flicker of something like sympathy crosses Sakurai’s face, and he continues in gentler tones.

“We’re with a group called the ‘ASD’—well, there’s a lot to explain…perhaps we could all go somewhere more private?”

Nino eyes him suspiciously, but suddenly the taller man—Aiba—bounces forward.

“There was a yakiniku place back that way,” he says enthusiastically, ruining the serious mood Sakurai had been maintaining. “Aren’t you hungry? I know I am!”

Nino and Sakurai both stare at him, and he wilts visibly.

“Well, you know, I just thought it would be a nice friendly atmosphere…”

Sakurai sighs through his nose, and Nino is about to give a snarky reply when his stomach growls audibly.

“So maybe I’m hungry!” he says after an awkward pause. “Whatever, let’s just go and get this over with.”

Sakurai nods, and motions for Aiba to lead the way. As the pair begins to move away, Nino makes to follow them, but suddenly finds his feet rooted to the ground.

_Kazu, please, let’s just go home, we don’t know them, please, please…_

It is very rare for Satoshi to assert control over Nino’s body, and even more unusual for him to do so without Nino’s permission. Nino does what he can to comfort the other man.

_Shh, it’s okay. They seem harmless, alright? If we don’t go with them, they’ll probably just keep following us. We’ll just see what they have to say, tell them ‘no’, and move on with our lives, okay?_

_I won’t let them take you anywhere_ , Satoshi says, and Nino finds his arms coming up to cross protectively over his chest, and his fingers dig almost painfully into his biceps.

He doesn’t realizes he’s squeezed his eyes shut until he hears Aiba’s voice speaking directly in front of him, and his eyes fly open again.

“Satoshi-kun?” Aiba says cautiously.

Nino feels himself pushed back, his consciousness forced into a subordinate position as Satoshi stares defiantly out through his eyes. 

“Who _are_ you?” Satoshi demands. Aiba’s eyes widen a little in surprise, but he doesn’t back away. Slowly, carefully, he puts his hands on Nino’s shoulders.

“We’re not doctors,” he says softly, “and we’re not going to try and hurt you. Either of you. I promise. We want to help you. But you have to trust us. Okay?”

And then, for just a moment, Satoshi experiences the strangest sense of déjà vu. Nino feels it pass through him, and suddenly finds something in Aiba’s brown eyes that is comforting and familiar.

For several long moments, they just stand there, frozen in this odd little tableau while the crowds part around them. Sakurai looks like he wants to say something, but is afraid to interrupt. Gradually, little by little, with each breath, Satoshi retreats.

“Okay,” Nino says at last, in his own voice.

Aiba grins and gives an encouraging nod. “Let’s go!”

This time, when Sakurai and Aiba start to walk away, Nino is able to follow. He is silent as they make their way back up the street, gently reaching towards Satoshi’s huddled consciousness.

_Are you scared?_

_Yes._

_Why?_

Satoshi doesn’t reply immediately, but Nino feels the other man’s presence wrap around him possessively.

_Because everything is going to change._


	2. Chapter 2

Before any serious conversations can start, however, they have to make their way to the restaurant, secure a table, and order food. The restaurant is upscale enough that they get a small private room with its own set of sliding paper doors, but the menu is massive, and finding anything on it is something of a challenge. This takes longer than Nino would really like, especially when Aiba begins an epic amount of deliberation over the dinner sets. Sho begs him to hurry, and when Aiba turns to Nino in search of an ally, he is sorely disappointed when Nino immediately orders the cheapest thing on the menu. 

Eventually, they have all ordered and their food has arrived and is sizzling pleasantly on their table-top grill. Nino decides he’s waited long enough.

“Alright, talk. First of all, why were you stalking me?”

“We were monitoring you,” Sakurai says, with just the slightest emphasis on the word, “to get an idea of what your daily life is like.”

“And you need to know that because?”

“Because we thought you might be crazy,” Aiba says through a mouthful of beef.

Sakurai throws his partner a long-suffering glare. “It is not unusual for Carriers to be mentally unstable, and we wanted to make sure—”

“Whoa, wait. What? ‘Carriers’? You think I have some kind of disease or something?”

“No, no, we—” Sakurai cuts himself off, and takes a fortifying gulp of his Asahi. “Let me start from the beginning.”

“Please do,” Nino says dryly. He snatches a strip of pork off the grill while Sakurai organizes his thoughts.

“We are with a group called the All Souls Division, the ASD. Technically, it is a private organization, but it has not infrequent dealings with the government—”

“Like the _X Files_ ,” Aiba interrupts helpfully. “But no aliens.”

Sakurai purses his lips and carries on with barely a pause. “It is also involved in some groundbreaking research concerning science and spirituality.”

“Okay. And what does this have to do with me?”

“Well,” Sakurai says, looking genuinely surprised, “seeing as your body houses two souls, I’d say it has a lot to do with you.”

For a few moments, Nino just stares at him blankly. Then the words start to sink in. _One body—two souls_. It makes more sense than anything any doctor ever told him.

“How do you even know about…about us, anyway?” Nino says finally.

“As I said, the ASD has connections to the government—that was how we were able to access your medical records—”

“My _medical records_??”

“—and were able to determine that you were a possible candidate for the ASD’s new experiment. Your case is very unique. The ASD has been studying transmigration of the soul for many years, and a situation like yours is one that could advance their research dramatically.”

Nino feels Satoshi tense up. Images of white lights, lab coats, brain scanners. “You can’t hook us up to machines or cut us up, if that’s what you’re getting at,” he snaps, more defensive than he means to be.

“No, no,” Sakurai says quickly. “Like Aiba said, we’re not going to hurt you, or experiment on you. What we’d like to try is something that should be beneficial to you both.”

“Which is?”

Sakurai fixes Nino with a measuring stare, but it is Aiba who speaks first.

“We’re going to give Satoshi his own body!”

Again, Nino finds himself speechless. It is a concept he has never even considered before, and he feels a sudden, intense desire burst to life in his chest—to actually see and touch Satoshi, to hear his voice outside of his own head. And Satoshi feels it too, Nino knows. They are both tense and alert as they watch the men across the table.

“You…you can do that?”

“Maybe,” Sakurai says, raising a quelling hand. “That’s what we’d like to find out.”

In Nino’s head, Satoshi is eerily silent, but Nino can feel his excitement and disbelief pulsing in his chest. _Careful, careful_ , Nino cautions him.

“It is dangerous?”

Sakurai spreads his hands. “It’s never been done. The thing is…” The dark haired man takes a deep breath and shares a brief glance with Aiba. “You may be in danger even if you don’t attempt the experiment.”

Nino’s sudden burst of hope dims slightly. “What?”

“This particular experiment has never been carried through because most subjects…well, they die before we even get to them.”

A heavy silence settles over the table. Suddenly, the grills seem too loud, the laughter from beyond the doors shrill and harsh.

“…they die?”

This time, it’s Aiba who speaks up, and he seems to do so almost unconsciously. His gaze is fixed on the middle distance as he addresses the room at large.

“A body isn’t meant to hold two souls,” he murmurs. “After a while it just…starts to break.”

For another heartbeat, Nino is caught up in the strange tension of Aiba’s statement. And then, suddenly, he comes crashing back to reality.

“Wait, wait, wait. Let’s just stop for a second. How do I even know you guys are legit? This all sounds like something out of a bad sci-fi movie. This…this is a joke!”

And more than anything, Nino is angry with himself—for going along with this, for coming to this stupid restaurant in the first place, for being dumb enough to think any of this could be real. His food is only half eaten, but he makes to leave anyway.

“Wait!” Sakurai yelps, half lunging across the table in his desperation. “Please, just…look, I know this is all very hard to believe, but if you give us a chance to show you…”

“Show me what?” Nino growls. “The hidden cameras this is all being recorded on? I’m not going to be part of some freak show—”

“Ninomiya-kun, please!” Aiba says, pleading. “What if you could meet Satoshi first, before the experiment?”

The utter bizarreness of the statement gives Nino pause. “What are you…meet him?”

“Like in a body. Face to face.”

“But…that doesn’t make any sense…”

“There is a way,” Sakurai cuts in, “to transplant a soul temporarily, to a kind of manufactured host body, so you could get an idea of what the experiment would ultimately involve.”

Nino is still staring at them with a mix of anger and confusion. After a pause, Sakurai reaches into his pockets and digs around until he comes up with a wallet and pulls out a business card.

“This is my number. Think about it. Call me when you’ve decided.”

Numbly, Nino takes the card. He stares blankly at the small neat print, then back at Sakurai and Aiba, watching him expectantly. Then he leaves without another word.

The hostesses by the door call out a cheerful “Goodnight!” as he walks out, but Nino ignores them. He’s barely aware of where his feet are carrying him, leaves his coat hanging open and his scarf loose around his neck in the hopes that the cold night air will clear the fog in his head. Five minutes later he’s shivering violently but feels no calmer. Catching sight of his reflection in a dark shop window, he winces. His already angular face is pinched with dark circles under the eyes, and his hair, only recently grown long enough to fall into his face, is lanky and in disarray. 

_God, I look like I just came off a bad binge_ , he thinks, buttoning up his coat.

 _Kazu_ , Satoshi says, and his voice is a soft, hesitant murmur. The word is a dozen questions, a plea for reassurance, an affirmation that he’s still there.

 _I don’t know_ , Nino replies. 

_What if…what if they’re telling the truth?_

_And what if they’re not?_

Silence.

***

Outside the restaurant a few minutes later, Sho watches Ninomiya disappear into the crowd with a grim smile. He knows he’s going to get that phone call.

“This doesn’t feel right,” Aiba says, stepping up beside him. “It just doesn’t seem fair to them.”

“I know,” Sho sighs. “But we have to see this assignment through at all costs. The separation won’t be easy for them, but it’s for their own good.”

Aiba makes an uncertain noise in his throat, but doesn’t respond. When Sho begins to walk away, Aiba follows with a last stolen glance over his shoulder. After a few blocks, Sho speaks again.

“Aiba-kun, when you talked to Satoshi earlier…I wasn’t sure, but it almost looked like…”

Aiba shifts his gaze away guiltily and jams his hands into his coat pockets. “I didn’t—I mean, it wasn’t on purpose, so…”

“Aiba,” Sho says with another sigh, “they can’t remember us if this is going to work. Please be more careful in the future.”

Aiba mutters an “okay”, but still looks pensive.

“I know this is hard for you as your fist assignment—” Sho begins, but Aiba is already shaking his head.

“No, I’m sorry,” he says with a chagrined smile. “I’ll be more careful. I don’t want to mess this up for you, Sho-chan.”

At the sound of the friendly and familiar diminutive, Sho feels his heart stop for an instant. Since the beginning of their assignment, Aiba has been polite to a fault, always calling him “Sakurai-kun” or “Sho-kun” at the very least. But Aiba doesn’t seem to realize he’s done anything out of the ordinary, so Sho lets it slide. Aiba has always been friendly—it’s probably just his nature starting to show through.

 _Just please_ , Sho thinks fervently, _don’t let Aiba remember, either._

***

The apartment is empty and dark when Nino gets back. He steps inside and out of his shoes, dropping his bag with a dull thud next to the kitchen door. It seems surreal to be home, he feels detached from his body and half-asleep, an excess of questions and speculations slowing down his brain.

He doesn’t realize he’s just been standing in the dark hallway staring at nothing until he hears a key rattling in the door. He jumps and turns to see Jun peering at him owlishly from the genkan.

“Did you just get here?” the younger man asks. His words are only faintly slurred and he barely wobbles when he bends down to undo the ridiculous number of buckles on his stylish boots.

“Yeah,” Nino answers vaguely. “I ran into some people.”

Jun raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t question him further. Once he’s out of his shoes, he saunters forward and pushes Nino’s coat off his shoulders for him.

“Well, I’m glad you’re up, anyway. The girl they paired me up with was so boring, all she wanted to talk about was her ex. And she wasn’t even hot.”

As he speaks, Jun begins to pepper kisses across Nino’s cheeks and down his neck. Nino almost pushes him away—this close, he reeks of alcohol and has obviously had more to drink than he’s letting on—but with a little nudge of encouragement from Satoshi, he decides to give in. He lets Jun steer him backwards to the couch. His mind is still reeling from the conversation with Sakurai and Aiba, and he welcomes the chance to lose himself in Jun’s advances.

The backs of his calves meet couch cushions, and he lets himself fall. Jun smiles lazily and straddles his lap, capturing his lips for a slow, thorough kiss, then begins working open the buttons of his shirt. Nino’s hands come to rest loosely on Jun’s slim hips.

“You’re quiet,” Jun murmurs into Nino’s neck.

“Tired,” Nino answers, letting his head loll to the side. Jun only gives a faint hum of amusement.

 _Kazu_ , and Satoshi’s voice is a ghostly breath against his ear. Nino shivers pleasantly.

_Hmm?_

_If I had a body_ , Satoshi says, low and contemplative, _I could do this for you._

_Do what?_

_This._

And suddenly, it is not only Jun’s hands on Nino’s chest, but somehow Satoshi is there too, the _feel_ of the other man following the path of Jun’s fingers like trails of fire. Nino gasps and arches into the touch.

_What are you doing??_

“I thought you were tired,” Jun chuckles, but Nino’s only response is a strangled moan because Jun is dragging his tongue across the already painfully tight skin of his nipple. Satoshi’s touch mirrors everything Jun is doing, doubling, intensifying, and making Nino nearly senseless with lust.

_Satoshi—ah—what…what are you…?_

_It could be like this, with us._

It’s not something they’ve never done—at least, they’ve certainly shared in the pleasure when it’s with Jun, and when they were young and overloaded with hormones, it was a joint effort to find relief. But this is different, so wonderfully, strangely different from any pleasure they’ve shared before, Nino can hardly think for the excess of sensation.

He doesn’t realize Jun has undone his pants until the younger man’s hand is suddenly cupped around him.

“Jesus, you’re already hard,” Jun says with a breathless giggle. “Only one solution for that.”

Jun slides to the floor, and Nino is practically writhing in anticipation. Jun looks up at him through lowered lashes, running teasingly light touches along Nino’s length.

“For fuck’s sake, Jun,” Nino chokes out, tangling his fingers in Jun’s hair, “ _do_ something.”

The other man smiles, clearly enjoying how very desperate Nino has become, but obliges. When he leans forward and takes Nino into his mouth, it takes everything Nino has in him not to scream.

All the while, Satoshi is whispering his name, murmuring incoherent promises and affectionate nonsense. Little noises keep escaping Nino’s lips, unbidden, and Satoshi is there, he is touching him more intimately than they have ever touched before.

_Nn—Satoshi…!_

_Kazu, I want this. I want you._

_I—ah! Satoshi!_

And then Nino comes suddenly and violently, vaguely aware that Jun is still there, fingernails digging into Nino’s hips to keep him still.

When the white begins to fade from Nino’s vision, he is completely limp and breathing heavily. He looks up to find Jun standing over him, wiping the back of his wrist across his mouth.

The look on the younger man’s face is one of utter fury. His voice is cold daggers when he speaks.

“Who the fuck is Satoshi?”

Nino can only blink stupidly.

_Oh shit._


	3. Chapter 3

When Nino doesn’t respond quickly enough, Jun grates out an angry “ _Fine_ ”, and stalks off to his room, slamming the door behind himself. Still caught up in post-coital euphoria, Nino lets his head fall limply onto the back of the couch.

 _We could just tell him_ , Satoshi says, slow and sleepy.

 _Yeah, right._ Nino lets out a long sigh. _Satoshi, what you just did…_

_You liked it._

_Yes, but—_

_So did I._

Nino finds his fingers trailing lightly over his bare abdomen without a memory of putting them there.

 _We’re going to talk about this_ , he says firmly. But all he gets from Satoshi is an overwhelming sense of sated self-satisfaction. 

Too tired to argue any more, the last thing Nino manages to do before completely passing out is to put his pants back on.

***

In the morning, he wakes stiff and cold to the sound of the front door slamming. He sits up with a jerk, wincing at the crick in his neck and lower back. After a moment of confusion, he realizes Jun must have just left.

“Drama queen,” he mutters viciously, rubbing sleep and crust out of his eyes. When his vision finally refocuses, his eyes find the VCR clock.

8:46.

He’s supposed to be at work in fourteen minutes.

Hissing a stream of curses, Nino leaps off the couch. He’s out the door five minutes later, his only concession to personal hygiene being a fresh T-shirt. He grabs a coffee and a pack of breath mints to wash it down as he dashes through the train station and is only ten minutes late when he arrives at his day job at the super market.

But it is the last day of the month, almost everything in the store is on sale, and all the housewives and grandmothers in a ten mile radius seem to be there to shop. There is a line at Nino’s register for the entire day, and he is far too busy to think about what happened at the restaurant, or with Jun, or anything else for that matter.

Satoshi, however, is not. Nino is acutely aware of how the other man’s thoughts keep wandering back to the business card that is still stuffed in Nino’s coat pocket. Last night, also, is still in the forefront of Satoshi’s mind, and all day long Nino keeps feeling those “touches”—curious, experimental—and it makes him shudder and gasp at odd moments. Several customers give him nervous looks, and one elderly woman asks him concernedly if he’s coming down with a cold. Nino plasters on a smile and tells her he’s fine.

_Stop it!_

Nino feels Satoshi retreat, only a little, grinning.

He leaves the super market at six, only to head straight to the game center. The arcade is just as packed as yesterday, and Ryo keeps asking if Nino is alright. Unable to keep laughing off his distraction, Nino decides to go with “coming down with a cold” after all. He must look at least that bad, because Ryo takes pity on him and tells him to go home early. Nino doesn’t have to be told twice.

But, once he’s off the clock, Satoshi is right there—with him, all around him. They don’t speak, but Nino can feel Satoshi’s impatience, his desire to be alone, just the two of them. Already high strung from two busy shifts, Nino feels ready to snap by the time he walks through his front door.

Any hope of a quiet retreat to his own room is quickly ruined by the sight of Jun, seated on the couch with his arms crossed, looking angry and expectant.

“Hi,” he says, and there seems to be an understood “and what do you have to say for yourself?” in his tone.

Nino just grunts a greeting, feigning obliviousness. He drops his things in a disorderly pile and wanders into the kitchen, if only for an excuse to prolong the inevitable. There’s hardly anything worth bothering with in the fridge, but Nino rummages around for as long as he can before coming away with a half-empty bottle of green tea. As he snaps the refrigerator door shut, he hears Jun speaking from the other room.

“So, what? You’re just not going to talk to me?”

Nino stops in the doorway with a sigh. 

“What do you want me to say?” He keeps his voice monotone and unemotional.

Jun stares at him for a moment, anger and disbelief warring across his features. “I think I at least deserve an explanation!”

“Why?” Nino asks coldly. He walks into the living room, past Jun, to sit at his usual spot in front of the couch, leaning forward to turn on his PlayStation. “It’s not like we’re exclusive. We’re not anything—we’re fuck-buddies, Jun, friends with benefits. So I really don’t see how who I sleep with is any of your business.”

Jun is silent, and Nino doesn’t turn to look at him. Honestly, he’s expecting to be punched in the face, or maybe thrown out of the apartment. So he’s surprised by what happens next.

“Right,” Jun mutters quietly. Then he stands and walks calmly to his room. There is no door slamming this time, just the sound of a light switch clicking off, and a body hitting the bed.

Nino finds himself wishing Jun had just punched him.

He stays up until almost dawn, leveling frantically and refusing to think. Satoshi is still there, insistent, but Nino ignores him. Only when he is too tired to keep his eyes open anymore does he drag himself to his bedroom. Tomorrow is a rare and blessed day off and he plans to sleep through as much of it as possible.

Nino flops down onto the bed on his side, fully clothed and uncaring. Unconsciousness is only a few breaths away, but he doesn’t quite get there.

In that warm, dizzy place between sleeping and waking, Nino finds Satoshi waiting for him. He has the impression of the other man lying down facing him, and one of Satoshi’s hands is on his cheek, then his forehead, tracing the contours of his face thoughtfully. Nino watches him, but can’t really see him. But that’s the way it’s always been—the Satoshi he meets here, or in dreams, is an idea of a person, the hint of a smile and the feeling that you’ve seen him before without really knowing what he looks like. Except for his eyes. Nino has always known Satoshi’s soft brown eyes, right down to the darker rim of color around the outside of the iris.

 _You didn’t need to be so mean to Jun_ , Satoshi says finally. _Please, let’s just tell him the truth._

 _I can’t,_ Nino breathes, barely awake at all. _He’ll think I’m lying, or crazy. At least this way he’ll stop asking._

_You don’t give him enough credit. I think Jun would believe you. He’s different._

_I can’t_ , Nino insists again. Then, _What are we going to do?_

Without needing to ask, Satoshi knows what Nino’s talking about.

 _I want to try it_ , he says, moving his arm down to Nino’s waist and sliding closer. _Don’t you?_

_I…yes, but…_

_But?_

_Aren’t you scared? How do we even know we can trust them?_

Satoshi is quiet for a little while, thinking.

_I guess we don’t, but…I do. There’s something almost…familiar about them._

Nino can’t help but agree, without knowing why. When he is silent for several long moments, Satoshi moves forward to wrap him in warmth.

 _No one’s going to take me away from you_ , he says to Nino’s unspoken fears. _We won’t let them. Right?_

Nino lets out a slow, comfortable sigh. _Right._

And then he is asleep, dreaming of the softest kisses and gentle fingertips dancing over his skin.

***

“Hello? This is Sakurai.”

“It’s me. Ninomiya.”

“Ah, Ninomiya-kun, I was hoping—”

“We’ll try it. The transfer or…or whatever it is. Where do we meet you?”

“Let me get you the address.”

***

On Thursday morning, Nino finds himself in front of an unassuming three-story building with the words _Kitagawa Clinic_ in neat lettering over the sliding double doors.

Suddenly, Satoshi is having second thoughts.

_They said they weren’t doctors…_

Nino twists his lips ruefully, but refrains from any “I told you so”s.

_Well, we’re already here. Let’s just get this over with._

The automatic doors swoosh smoothly open when Nino enters. The reception area is a standard white and beige themed room with a few pastel-toned watercolor paintings on the wall. Aside from the receptionist, there is no one there but Sakurai, who is waiting by the front desk. Today he’s traded in his trench coat for a neatly pressed suit in dark blue.

“Ninomiya-kun,” he says with a polite bow.

“What is this place?” Nino asks, skipping the formalities.

Sakurai’s smile strains just a little. “The hospital exterior is just a disguise,” he says reassuringly. “We can’t exactly advertise what we do here.”

“What _do_ you do here?” Nino asks as the other man leads him through a doorway in the back of the room.

Through the door there is a short hallway ending in another door. It reminds Nino oddly of an airlock, something out of a science-fiction movie, especially when he sees the high-tech looking keypad next to the far door,

“I’d need a lot more time then we have to explain that,” Sakurai replies. He punches a few numbers on the keypad, there is a faint buzz, a click, and he pushes open the door.

Nino’s not sure what he’s expecting. More white walls and hospital rooms, maybe. But beyond the threshold, the “clinic” looks like nothing more than a rather run-down office building. They are walking down a long hallway with open doors all along either side. There is faded, tacky wallpaper peeling off the walls; several bulletin boards covered in papers; over-filled filing cabinets spilling out of the offices and into the hallway. 

Nino steals a glance at a stack of paper on top of one of the cabinets, but the uppermost sheet is covered in nothing but long, incomprehensible strings of numbers and roman characters. The bulletin boards, too, are a mystery. There are sheets that look like graphs with no data on them, a few other semi-official looking documents, but the rest is just junk. Movie posters from the 80s, a flyer from the pizza place down the block, and even an old candy wrapper. Nino sees other people—“employees” seems the wrong word, but he doesn’t know what to call them—moving in and out of the offices and looking preoccupied.

“Of course,” Sakurai continues, “I will be explaining a little more about the transmigration process before we actually start the transfer. We’ve got everything set up right over—oh, Ikuta-kun!” 

Sakurai is addressing a young man in shirtsleeves and a tie who just bounded out of a stairway up ahead, but Ikuta seems oblivious and dashes past them without a pause.

“Ikuta-kun!” Sakurai tries again, and when the young man turns into one of the offices without a backwards glance: “TOHMA!”

The young man’s head pops back into the hallway. “What? I mean, yes? Sir?”

“Is Aiba still in his office?”

“Yeah. I mean, yes, sir. He’s still working on that file you gave him.”

“Good. If anyone needs me, I’ll be upstairs in Room 4. But page the phone first, please.”

“Yessir.” 

And then Ikuta disappears again. Sakurai gives Nino an apologetic smile, and then leads him up the staircase Ikuta just descended. One floor up the hallway is a little neater and all the doors are shut, but Nino is hard pressed to find anything about the building that’s threatening. Confusing, yes, but not threatening or suspicious. Satoshi is still puzzling over the heart-shaped stickers he spotted on a wall downstairs when Sakurai leads them into a room on the right-hand side of the hallway.

It looks almost like a study, with a few bookshelves against the walls, a small desk in the corner, and a pair of low-backed leather armchairs facing each other across the room. And against the back wall, another door. Sakurai takes one of the chairs, and motions for Nino to take the other.

“I don’t get it,” Nino complains as he drops into his chair. The leather lets out an undignified squeak.

“Pardon?”

“This place. It sounded so official and important when you talked about it before. But this is so…” he’s momentarily at a loss for words, and Satoshi finishes the sentence for him.

“Unreal.”

Sakurai’s brows crease for a moment, then he gives a little shrug. “I’ll admit, the first floor is a bit of a mess,” he chuckles. “We’re working on getting it cleaned up.”

Nino gets the feeling that Sakurai is being purposefully obtuse. Before he can say anything more on the subject, the other man is clearing his throat and preparing to speak again.

“Anyway, as I told you the other night, the ASD is mainly concerned with the study of transmigration of the soul, or what is commonly called re—”

“Reincarnation, yeah,” Nino says impatiently.

Sakurai, apparently a master of being interrupted, barely blinks. “Reincarnation, yes. What we’re doing today is part of a long-term project dealing with controlled migration.”

“So…picking which body a soul goes into next?”

“Basically, that’s the idea.”

“That seems kind of…wrong,” Nino says skeptically.

“It was something that was started to help people, not unlike yourself, with special circumstances. As I’m sure you can tell, we’re not exactly an evil organization bent on world domination or anything.”

Nino just makes a noncommittal noise in his throat. “So how does this work? Do I get plugged up to something? Do I have to meditate for several hours?”

“Follow me,” Sakurai replies simply, standing and moving towards the far door.

On the other side is another nondescript little room that looks like it might have once been a bedroom. A set of drawers stands in the corner. There is a window but whatever view it might offer is hidden by thick curtains. Inexplicably, there is a painting of a lake hung by the door. In the middle of the room there is another pair of chairs facing each other, but these are simple ladder-backed wooden chairs, and next to them is a strange kind of low table.

After closer inspection, Nino realizes it’s not really a table but some kind of machine, about two feet by four, plain white and sleek. It almost looks like an enormous computer tower. It even has the same low hum. On top of the device at opposite ends there are two faintly glowing blue circles, a few buttons and a keypad.

But what makes Nino jump when Sakurai first opens the door is the presence of another person in the room.

“This is just the Host,” Sakurai says, motioning to the still form in the chair facing the door. “The manufactured body for the transfer.”

Nino feels his skin crawl. Now that Sakurai has said so, Nino realizes that the “person” is not really a person—just something that has the shape of one. It’s wearing dark pants and a plain white dress shirt. It has a short, generic haircut. But the face is too smooth, too symmetrical to be real, like the face of a doll. When Sakurai motions for Nino to take the chair opposite the Host, he almost can’t do it.

“This,” Sakurai says, fiddling with the purring device, “is a Soul Transfer System. Most of us just call it ‘The Palm Reader’.” He smiles wryly at this, then continues at Nino’s look of confusion. 

“Your hand goes here, on this ring,” he taps the glowing circle closest to Nino, “and the Host’s goes on the other. Now, something I have to explain here is that all souls have what we call a ‘Code’, kind of like the DNA we have in our bodies. It’s the blueprint for the soul, and it’s what stores their personality and memories, as well as how they will appear in each cycle of rebirth. If we program Satoshi’s Code into the Reader, we’ll be able to transfer him to the Host.”

“And how exactly do we do that?” Nino snaps. This whole situation is making him edgy, and the presence of the unmoving Host body isn’t helping.

“I’ll need you to let Satoshi take over for a moment,” Sakurai murmurs distractedly while he punches buttons, like this whole conversation—this whole situation—isn’t completely bizarre. When Nino doesn’t reply, he glances up. “Can you do that?”

“Yeah,” Nino says, tearing his eyes away from the Host. “Just…hang on a second.”

Nino lets his eyes slide shut, brushes up against Satoshi in his mind.

 _It’s okay. Go ahead._ Satoshi is strangely quiet. _Satoshi?_

_…What if I can’t get back?_

_What?_

_From that other body. What if I’m stuck?_

Though Nino finds himself mildly annoyed at Satoshi’s hesitance— _he_ was the one who wanted to do this so badly in the first place—he is understanding.

_We can leave. Right now. We don’t have to do this._

Satoshi contemplates this for a few moments, and Nino feels his fear battling with his curiosity. Eventually, he makes up his mind.

_No. No, I’ll stay. I’ll try._

And then, without any more warning, Satoshi pushes Nino’s consciousness back and away. It’s a little startling how easily and quickly he does this.

“Alright,” Satoshi says aloud, “I’m here.”

Sakurai nods, punches a few more buttons, and the Reader begins to hum at a slightly higher frequency. Nino is aware, from a distance, of a faint tingling in his hand where it touches the machine.

“Good,” Sakurai says, only a moment later. “I think we’re ready to proceed.”

Satoshi retreats again as Sakurai lifts the Host’s hand and places it on the opposite ring. 

“I’m programming it for the transfer now,” Sakurai says. “It will take about a minute for the whole process to finish. I’m going to step out of the room, and give you some privacy. Just shout or knock on the door if you need anything.”

“You’re leaving?” Nino asks, surprised.

Sakurai gives him an awkward kind of a smile. “I imagine this will be something of an…intimate moment. However,” and he pauses here, uncertainly. “I don’t…well, the Host body is different from a normal human body, so I recommend that you don’t try to touch it.”

Nino feels a faint blush starting in his cheeks, and wonders just how much Sakurai knows or has guessed. Too embarrassed to speak, he just nods. Pushing a final sequence of numbers, Sakurai leaves the room, shutting the door quietly.

One minute. Nino hears the hum of the Reader change again, and the tingles begin in his hand, but it seems like hours before anything really starts to happen. He glances around the room nervously, trying to keep his breathing even.

And then he feels it. The tingles start to spread, up his arm and across his chest, freezing him in place like an electrical current. And then it _pulls_. He feels something being drawn out of him, away, and he squeezes his eyes closed, fighting it while knowing he shouldn’t. Satoshi gives him a last reassuring embrace, and then…

Gone.

The sensation of loss is immediate and terrible. The space that housed Satoshi’s presence is empty, vast, and Nino lets out a small choked gasp.

“Kazu?”

The sound of that too familiar voice coming from outside his own head makes his heart stop. Nino’s eyes fly open. 

Somehow, the body in the chair across from him has changed. The Host is no longer a lifeless doll. Its skin— _his_ skin—is a gently tanned brown, his face is round and soft, full lips, and those dark hazel eyes. His hair is straight and a little shaggy, hanging down around his ears. He has raised his hands to look at them wonderingly, and his fingers are long and elegant, artistic. 

“Satoshi.” Nino barely whispers the name, because it’s happening, he’s seeing Satoshi for the first time and he has no words for how it feels.

They just stare at each other for several long moments. Nino is thoroughly entranced by Satoshi’s face, the line of his brows, the way his mouth hangs open just a little.

“You look…like you,” he manages eventually, still a bit breathless.

“What’s ‘like me’?” Satoshi asks. And then Nino sees his smile, and can’t help smiling back.

“Kind of dumb,” he teases, “but cute.”

“Ah. I’m glad Kazu thinks I’m cute.”

Satoshi’s full-fledged, brilliant smile is just too much, and Nino forgets Sakurai’s previous cautions and throws his arms around the other man—to finally, really, touch him.

But he pulls away almost immediately, stumbling back into his own chair and knocking it over with a clatter. Satoshi is looking equally stricken, arms still held out for an embrace.

Because when he put his arms around Satoshi, Nino couldn’t feel a thing. There was no warmth, or soft skin, just nothingness. He could see his arms around Satoshi’s neck, knew he was pressed against Satoshi’s chest, but there was only a lack of sensation, no sense of meeting resistance. It was as if his muscles simply refused to contract any further. Like he was holding empty air.

“Kazu…what…?”

Nino is just shaking his head, feeling suddenly panicked, frantic.

“I can’t touch you. Why can’t I touch you?” He steps forward and places a hand against Satoshi’s face, but the result is the same. As if his hand has just stopped where he knows Satoshi should be.

“No,” he whispers. And then he is shouting.

“NO!”

***

Sho closes the door behind himself gently. After a pause, he moves to the left and presses a cleverly concealed panel on the top of a low bookshelf. A section of wall next to the door, roughly window-sized, slides open to reveal a slightly darkened view into the room where Nino is seated. The painting of the lake on the other side of the hidden opening makes everything an odd blue color.

He crosses his arms to wait for the first sixty seconds of the transfer to pass, but is interrupted by the door to the hallway opening. 

“I asked you to page—” he begins, but trails away when he sees Aiba coming through the door, looking sheepish.

“Sorry, Sho-kun, I just asked Tohma where you were and he said you were up here, so…” Aiba peers around the older man curiously, and his eyes light up as he crosses the room. “Oh, it’s Ninomiya-kun! Why didn’t you tell me he was coming today?”

“Did you finish that paperwork I gave you?” Sho says weakly. Aiba really shouldn’t be here. He’s going to kill Tohma when he finds him.

“Well—no, not exactly. It was really boring!” he complains, seeing the look on Sho’s face. “I’ll do it later, I promise.” He looks back towards the hidden window. “Oh! Look! That must be Satoshi!”

Sho glances back and sees that the Host has taken on Satoshi’s Code, and seems to be speaking to Ninomiya.

“It really is kind of important, though, that file” he tries desperately. “I can handle this on my own, it’s just a preliminary—”

“Wait,” Aiba cuts him off. He’s staring into the other room now with wide, almost frightened eyes. “Something’s…”

Sho can hear Ninomiya’s voice dimly through the glass, _Why can’t I touch you?_ He needs to get Aiba out of here, this is too similar, too much of a trigger—but he knows it’s already too late when Aiba turns to face him. Aiba’s eyes search his face, flickering back and forth across his features.

“Sho-chan,” he says, and it is a hesitant question. Then, something clicks, Aiba’s eyes widen again. “Sho-chan!”

Before Sho can move away, Aiba’s hand darts out to grab him by the wrist. His reaction is just like Nino’s—he drops Sho’s arm again almost immediately, hissing like he’s been burned.

“Why?” Aiba asks. He looks so lost and scared, but Sho can do nothing but stand and stare at him sadly. “This isn’t how—I can’t—I don’t understand—”

“Masaki, please,” Sho begins, but Aiba is backing away towards the far door. “I can explain, just—”

Before he can finish, Aiba runs.


	4. Chapter 4

Sho makes to chase after Aiba, but he’s only gone a few steps when a loud pounding on the other door brings him up short. Ninomiya is yelling from the other side.

“Hey! HEY! Put him back! I changed my mind, put him back!”

Sho hesitates for the briefest instant, then decides he’ll have to trust Aiba to take care of himself. He spins on his heel and crosses the room to open the door. Why Ninomiya didn’t just open it himself instead of all the theatrics, Sho doesn’t know, although admittedly the other man doesn’t seem to be quite in his right mind.

Ninomiya still has a fist raised for another round of banging when Sho opens the door. He looks stunned for a moment, then lunges forward as if to grab Sho by the shirt front, but Sho dodges out of the way instinctively. Ninomiya scowls at him, then turns around and marches back into the room.

“Just put him back,” he growls, righting his fallen chair. “ _Now_.”

Sho sighs, a sharp breath out through his nose. This is all blowing up in his face. Naturally. “Just give me a moment, please.”

As he begins to program in the reverse sequence, Sho finally glances over at Satoshi, who is watching Nino with a lost, worried expression. He catches Sho’s eye, then, and Sho is hit with a heavy wave of nostalgia.

“What’s going on?” Satoshi asks quietly. “Why can’t we…?”

Sho’s expression softens. It’s hard, the sudden realization of the limitations the Host body sets you, and Sho can’t help but feel sympathetic. 

“As I said, the Host isn’t a real body, it’s more like…a projection. A blank template that the soul’s Code gives a shape to, but…Well, again, it’s hard to explain—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Ninomiya interrupts. He’s not looking at Sho, or even Satoshi. He has his eyes squeezed shut instead. “Just hurry up.”

Sho purses his lips—wanting to try and talk Ninomiya down, calm him, convince him not to leave which he will surely do the moment Satoshi is back in his body—but knows that Ninomiya isn’t going to be in the mood to listen to what he has to say. A moment later, he has finished inputting the reverse sequence.

“Alright, place your hands back on the Reader, please.”

Ninomiya’s hand is already in place. Satoshi looks away from Sho slowly, then back to Ninomiya before placing his hand on the Reader. The machine hums to life, and somehow the sixty seconds seem to go by in the blink of an eye. Satoshi’s image begins to fade from the Host, returning it to its blank, doll-faced form. Suddenly, Ninomiya sucks in a deep, shuddering breath like a diver coming up for air, then wraps his arms around himself with a little whimper. He’s silent for a few moments, trembling, but Sho knows there is some kind of rapid exchange going on behind Ninomiya’s closed eyes.

Before Sho can say anything, Ninomiya has risen, knocking his chair over again, and is out the door in a few quick strides. Sho has no choice but to follow him.

“Ninomiya-kun, please, I know this didn’t go quite the way you had hoped, but I did warn you—”

“Forget it!” Ninomiya shouts, already at the stairs. “I’m leaving. Don’t follow me, don’t call me, _do not_ come to my house. Just leave us alone.”

“If you would just give me a few minutes to—”

“Stop it!” Ninomiya is halfway down the stairwell when he turns to face Sho, bringing the other man skidding to a stop. “Stop trying to take Satoshi away. We’re fine the way we are, okay? Just…leave us alone.”

“But—”

Ninomiya starts down the stairs again before Sho gets much farther. He’s practically jogging by the time he makes it to the first floor hallway, and almost barrels into Ikuta, who jumps out of the way just in time. Sho throws his younger coworker an apologetic look as he dashes past. Ninomiya has finally stopped at the door that leads out the to reception area, barred exit by the keypad next to the door. Sho hurries up to him and starts punching in his code, hoping to avoid another—more public—scene.

“This was just a preliminary demonstration,” Sho says quickly, in an undertone. “The final transfer would be to a _real_ body, one you can feel and touch just like normal. Please think this over. You can come back here any time.”

He has locked eyes with Ninomiya now, and prays that some of his words are sinking in.

“Open the goddamn door,” is all Ninomiya says.

With another quiet sigh, Sho does as he asks. And then Ninomiya, and Satoshi, are gone.

Sho turns to find Ikuta coming towards him down the hall.

“Ikuta-kun, have you seen Aiba—”

“About five minutes ago, just ran out of here like the building was on fire.” The worried expression on the younger man’s face indicates that he understands at least some of the weight of this disaster. “But we’ve got bigger problems.”

Sho’s eyebrows go up in surprise. “What?”

“Just got paged from the Third Floor. They’re sending someone down to speak to you.”

And Sho feels a fist close around his heart.

“Oh no.”

***

Aiba doesn’t know where he’s going, he just runs.

At first, the panic carries him blindly through the streets. He turns random corners, occasionally jostles strangers on busy intersections, but he keeps going. Maybe, if he runs far enough, if he gets far enough away, the memories will go away, too.

Eventually, though, he starts to tire. His mad dash becomes a jog, and soon enough he is reduced to a stumbling walk. Though he’s overheated and breathing hard, the cold wind chills his sweaty skin. When he passes a ramen shop—steam wafting out every time someone comes out the door—he realizes he is starving. But he ran out of the building with nothing but the clothes on his back, without his wallet or even a handful of change.

When his legs finally give out and he collapses, he finds himself on a park bench. There’s a dilapidated little shrine nestled in the bushes across from where he’s sitting, and he feels like he’s been here before. While the feeling is comforting, it is also unsettling. It’s hard to tell, now, which memories are from _now_ and which are from _before_.

Aiba has always been able to remember things. _Before_ things. That’s why the ASD recruited him, right? That’s how he met Sho, because Aiba remembered him, and then…

Sho. Sho-chan. At first, on that muggy August day almost five years ago when they met, it had been a vague, comfortable kind of knowing. The longer they were together, the stronger the feeling became, but it wasn’t until today that he actually saw things. Images. Memories. Moments of his life—their life, together.

Because Aiba knows now, with the certainty that he knows his own last name, that he was—and is—in love with Sho. And Sho knows, somehow, has always remembered. Because he never changed. He’s exactly the same as he was when Aiba woke up in that hospital bed to find Sho trapped in the Host body, cut off from Aiba forever.

With a low groan, Aiba drops his head into his hands, elbows resting on his knees. None of it makes any sense, there are still so many gaps in what he remembers, and he doesn’t know how to fill them in. Kazu and Satoshi are part of his broken memories, too, but in a more distant way. Sho, he’s sure of, and he’s sure of how wrong and horrible it is, not to be able to touch him, not to be able to hold him. He starts shivering, and not just from the cold.

“Hey,” says a hesitant, worried voice from somewhere to his left, “are you, um…okay?”

Aiba sits up, struggling to look in-control, and sees a lanky young man standing near his bench. The stranger is watching him uncertainly, maybe regretting the decision to say something. He’s young, with a slight wave permed into his hair, and a fashionably black jacket that’s cut to compliment his sharp angles. And his shoes are really pointy. Aiba shakes his head, trying to focus.

“Yeah, I’m…sorry, uh, rough day, I guess.”

After a pause, a rueful smile creeps on to the young man’s face. “Yeah. I know the feeling.”

There’s an awkward silence. Aiba stares at his feet, and the stranger adjusts the strap of his bag.

“So…you’ll be alright? Do you, I don’t know, need me to call someone, or…?”

“No, no,” Aiba says quickly, standing and forcing a smile. “Please don’t worry, I’m—”

He’s interrupted by an audible growl from his stomach.

“Hungry?” The stranger smiles, and Aiba laughs in embarrassment.

“Yeah, I guess so…” He sticks his hands in his pockets, pointlessly, knowing they’re empty.

Another pause as the young man looks Aiba up and down thoughtfully.

“Look,” he says, scratching the back of his head, “I know we just met and all, but how about I buy you some lunch? I just…” He trails off here, uncomfortable.

“It’s okay,” Aiba insists, “Really, going to that much trouble—”

“I just…well, I could use the company.”

Aiba blinks in surprise, unsure of how to respond. Company. Maybe that’s not such a bad idea. Someone to talk to, take his mind off his own problems for a while.

“Okay,” he says eventually. He smiles, and the stranger smiles back. His teeth are a little crooked and too big, but somehow it’s charming.

“I’m Jun, by the way,” the stranger says, “Matsumoto Jun.”

“Aiba Masaki,” and Aiba sticks out a hand. Jun eyes it a little dubiously before shaking.

“Huh,” Jun says, once they’ve let go, “déjà vu.”

***

Nino doesn’t remember much between leaving the clinic and finding himself at home, huddled under his blankets. It’s still early afternoon, but he has no intention of leaving his bed any time soon. He’s curled as tightly around himself as he can manage. As if his limbs will be enough of a barrier to keep the rest of the world out. And to keep Satoshi in.

_I’m right here. It’s okay, I’m right here with you._

Nino doesn’t answer, but his mind is still awash in the feeling of separation, and worse, the fear he had felt in the brief instant when he had been unable to touch Satoshi. The fear that Satoshi had voiced, but Nino dismissed so easily—that they would be stuck like this and he would never be able to feel Satoshi again.

 _Everything’s fine_ , and there’s a note of desperation in Satoshi’s voice. _I’m back now. And Sakurai said it was just a…a test. I could still get a real body—_

 _No!_ Nino’s answer is immediate and almost harsh. He feels Satoshi recoil a bit and softens his tone. _No, I can’t…I don’t think I can do it anymore. When you were gone, I…_

Words are not quite enough, but the memories of loneliness, emptiness, loss, pulse in time with Nino’s erratic heartbeat. From Satoshi, he feels worry and sympathy, but there is a whispered hint of something else. Disappointment.

Nino already knows that Satoshi wants to go back, to try again. He pushes this knowledge away from himself, and just hugs his arms more tightly around his ribcage. _How did this happen?_ he wonders. Hadn’t Satoshi been the one who didn’t want to let Nino go? What changed in those few minutes of being apart? Maybe…maybe Satoshi had liked being apart. Enough that the possibility of being stuck didn’t scare him anymore. Maybe he liked it better without Nino.

 _Don’t_ , Satoshi warns. Nino had tried to hide these thoughts, but he’d never learned the trick of it like Satoshi had. _Don’t think like that, ever._

Like a child, Nino clings harder when he senses Satoshi’s anger. Without words he begs him: _Love me, please, don’t leave me._

_I do. You know I do. But…_

_But?_

_I want more. I want to be more, I want to be…real._

_You are real._

_Am I?_

***

Sho takes the stairs two at a time, and dashes down the second floor hallway at top speed. Whoever they send down from Upstairs will be waiting in the little room at the top of the second floor stairwell, and he knows they do not like to be kept waiting long.

At the top of the second flight of stairs, Sho pauses to punch his code into the keypad, and struggles to catch his breath before entering the room. But when he pulls open the door, there’s no one there. He steps inside, his still uneven breathing sounding too loud in the empty white space, and arranges himself with his hands clasped politely in front of himself.

He’s expecting Kimura, or maybe Nakai. Though there is no official ranking within the five members of the senior unit, those are the two who generally seem to be in charge and give orders to everyone downstairs. It’s hard to make any guesses, though, since Sho only sees them in this room and there are sometimes years between meetings. What goes on Upstairs stays Upstairs, whatever orders they pass down or favors they choose to bestow are never explained, and questioning any of this is not an option. Really, Sho has them to thank that he’s even here right now, although he has wondered more than once if he should have turned down the offer of the Host body.

Sho is jerked back to reality when the door opposite him clicks open. His eyebrows go up at the sight of Kusanagi, but he schools his expression back to neutrality almost instantly.

While Kimura and Nakai can certainly be intimidating in their way, Kusanagi makes Sho nervous if only as an unknown element. The older man is all sharp planes and angles, emphasized by a black suit that reflects none of the light in the over-bright room. His face is set in stern lines—straight brows, high cheekbones, short-cropped hair. He approaches Sho slowly and almost casually.

“Well, Sakurai-kun,” he says, with something like a disappointed sigh, “your assignment does not seem to be going very well.”

“Yes, sir. I mean, no sir.” Sho swallows roughly.

“Not only did the demonstration with Ninomiya and Satoshi end in disaster, but now Aiba seems to be missing in action as well.”

“Yes, sir,” Sho is forced to agree. “But, I can bring the situation back to—”

“And the lost soul? The one you ‘misplaced’ during your last assignment?”

“I’m…working on it. Sir.” 

Kusanagi sighs again, rubbing a hand across his face. “You realize that this is unacceptable.”

Sho feels his heart stop for an instant. If they decide to remove him from his already tenuous position in the organization, if they take away the Host, he loses everything—his memories, Aiba, the chance to fix everything that went wrong.

“Sir, please just let me—”

“However,” Kusanagi interrupts, “seeing as you are the only Encoder we have managed to recruit in the last century, we are willing to give you another chance.”

Kusanagi fixes Sho with a heavy stare, letting him know that this is not an act of kindness, only tolerance. Sho just nods.

“But only one more chance,” Kusanagi continues. “You have three days. If you have not retrieved Ninomiya, Aiba, and the lost soul in that time, we will be forced to take control of things.”

It’s not enough time. Sho knows it’s not enough time, not without risking everything, but he has no choice. He nods again, slowly.

“Good,” and Kusanagi smiles for the first time since he walked through the door. The expression makes his features much less threatening, but his eyes are still hard and cold.

Moments later, Sho bows Kusanagi out, and then exits back into the stairwell. But instead of going back downstairs, he sits down heavily on the top step and drops his head into his hands, mussing his neatly combed hair.

How is he going to convince Ninomiya to come back after the way he left today? And the lost soul—something he had conveniently forgotten about until now—is a completely different kind of a problem. But there’s one thing that will make both these problems at least a little easier.

First, he has to find Aiba.


	5. Chapter 5

Kusanagi lets out a slow sigh as the door closes behind him, and pauses to let his eyes adjust. After the extreme brightness of the hallway, the Third Floor is dim and indistinct for a few moments.

He has to admit he’s disappointed. Sakurai had so much potential, Aiba too. All five of the prospectives had seemed promising, but now he’s afraid he’ll have to just set them loose and start from scratch. Given how much Sakurai and Aiba know about the ASD, he’ll probably have to get Nakai to re-Code their memories, too. A shame, really. And he had been so looking forward to an early retirement. Oh well.

When the room in front of him finally comes into focus, Kusanagi scowls. It’s changed again. The dimness wasn’t just from his eyes adjusting, someone’s Shifted the room and filled it with scuffed desks, low cubicle partitions, computers that look about fifteen years old. The ceiling is low and dark, and there’s even a beat-up water cooler in the corner. Somewhere, he smells coffee being brewed disgustingly strong. 

_Kimura and his damn cop shows_ , he thinks with exasperation. He spots the other man with his feet up on a desk on the far side of the room, flipping idly though a beige file folder. Kimura’s even gone as far as to have everyone got up in shirtsleeves and shoulder holsters. Ridiculous.

“What the hell is this, now?” Kusanagi demands, stopping in front of Kimura’s desk and gesturing at the room at large.

Kimura looks up and raises and elegant eyebrow. “Just thought the place could use a little change,” he says nonchalantly. “Your desk’s right over there.”

“It’s not so bad,” Katori chimes in from the corner. “We’ve even got darts now!” The younger man demonstrates by sending one of the darts he’s holding straight into the bull’s eye.

“Shingo, please shut up,” Kusanagi sighs. He rubs a hand over his face wearily. “While I’m glad you all have time for darts and redecorating, perhaps you should be a bit more concerned that we are about to lose all five of the recruits we have been working on for so long.”

“Why would we lose them?” This is Nakai, entering from a neighboring room with a mug of the coffee Kusanagi had smelled earlier. “That RedLiner, what’s his name—Sakurai. He’ll get them all back, won’t he?”

“Encoder,” Kimura corrects him. “I thought we agreed ‘Encoder’ was a more accurate name than ‘RedLiner’?”

“Oh whatever,” Nakai waves him off and takes a seat at the next desk over. “Anyway, he Coded all of them during his last assignment, didn’t he? Can’t he just pull his little strings and…?”

But Kusanagi is already shaking his head. “I don’t think he really knew what he was doing, at that point. He still doesn’t really know how to use his abilities. Speaking of which, weren’t _you_ supposed to start training him, Nakai-kun?”

Nakai doesn’t miss the sarcastic tinge to the formal title, and twists his lips grumpily. “Yeah, yeah, I was gonna get around to it…”

“And there’s something else going on,” Kusanagi continues, “something he hasn’t told us. I think he and Aiba might be…involved.”

Katori sniggers helpfully, and Nakai’s eyebrows rocket up to his hairline. “Well…that’s problematic.”

“Mm.” Kusanagi crosses his arms, glances around the room again. “And where the hell is Goro?”

Nakai shrugs dismissively. “I don’t know, wandered off. Sleeping somewhere, maybe. There’s a really nice old couch in the kitchenette.”

“Anyway,” Kusanagi rolls his eyes, “I gave him three days, although I don’t know how much he’ll be able to accomplish in that time. At the very least we’ll get Aiba back and then—”

“I’ve got it under control,” Kimura cuts in self-importantly, and Kusanagi shoots him a glare. “I’ve tapped Sakurai’s phone, and he will be monitored if and when he leaves the building.”

“You think he’ll lead us to Ninomiya as well?”

“What other choice does he have?” Kimura tosses the file he was perusing onto his desk. “He knows what’s at stake if he doesn’t bring them back.”

“Ninomiya might present a problem as well,” Kusanagi cautions. “He had an extremely negative reaction to the transfer—I don’t think he’ll want anything more to do with the Host body.”

“Then we’ll just wipe his memory once we have him here.” 

Kimura’s face is hard when he makes this statement. Kusanagi is reminded uncomfortably that while they have all lost things, people, along the way, Kimura has perhaps had to leave behind the most. He had a family when he was recruited. And he chose to have his own memories of them taken away. Clinging to the past is not a weakness he easily forgives in others.

At that moment, Inagaki ambles into the room, looking around curiously. “So what’d I miss?”

“Just sit down,” Kusanagi snaps at him. Inagaki looks vaguely wounded, but Katori scuttles over to give him a summary of the last few minutes while the other men continue the conversation.

Nakai speaks up first. “I don’t know if we should be so quick to scramble their brains, now—”

“It’s for their own good,” Kimura cuts in harshly. “It’s for us—do you want to be stuck here for another hundred years, Coding and Shifting, and just waiting for another bunch of prospectives to volunteer? It’s not going to happen, we have to take this chance now, while we have it.”

Katori has finished filling Inagaki in, and finally joins the discussion. His voice is a softer counterpoint to Kimura’s harsh tones. “We can’t make that choice for them, Takuya. It wouldn’t be fair.”

“To hell with fair!” Kimura swings his feet to the floor. “It wasn’t fair when Johnny rounded all of us up and stuck us here in the first place. I’m done. I’m tired.”

“We all are,” and this is Inagaki from his slouched position in his chair. “But we did chose this. They didn’t. It’ll be harder for them.”

Kimura throws his hands in the air, and drops his head dramatically against the back of his chair. “If they hadn’t all gone and fallen in love with each other,” he mutters with a sigh.

“Maybe we should just—” Katori begins, but then the phone on Kimura’s desk lets out an insistent beeping.

Kimura sits up with a jerk, and reaches for the phone. He puts a finger to his lips, cautioning everyone to silence, before pressing the speaker button. Sakurai’s voice crackles loudly in the quiet.

“Yes, this is Sakurai.”

“It’s—it’s me, Aiba.”

Kusanagi catches the fevered light in Kimura’s eye and knows there will be no more discussion for the time being.

***

Sho sits at his desk with his head in his hands, mostly hidden from his coworkers by piles of paperwork. He stares blankly at the organized clutter of his desk. He should be doing something, he should be taking action. But he can’t get past the thought: _Find Aiba._

The desk facing his own is a mess, only in part because the first thing he did was rifle through all of Aiba’s things. The other man left without his phone, his wallet, his keys—in short, Sho has no way of contacting Aiba or any way to guess where he is. He could be anywhere. He could be dead in a ditch. Unlikely, but the thought crosses Sho’s mind and makes his chest clench nervously. Aiba has always had a tendency to be reckless, especially when he’s emotional. 

On top of all this, Sho has no idea how much Aiba remembers. Enough to call him “Sho-chan” and know what it means. Enough to want to touch him. Sho realizes he has a bittersweet smile on his face—despite everything, part of him is almost relieved. At least he won’t have to pretend anymore.

God, but he misses Aiba. Even though they’ve been working together for the better part of three months, he misses the familiarity, the comfortable weight of a hand on his shoulder, the little smiles in the corners of Aiba’s eyes that were just for him. If Aiba remembers, really remembers, maybe they could get it all back, maybe—

But no. There will only be one Vessel, and it’s for Satoshi, so he can be with Nino. Sho would never forgive himself if he took that away from them. He hates that a part of him still wants to.

 _I have to find Aiba_ , he reminds himself. He can’t just sit here and mope, he’s got to do something. He stares at the empty plastic bottle on the corner of Aiba’s desk, still drawing a blank.

He has just opened his mouth to call Tohma over when his phone gives a sudden ring, making him jump. He snatches up the receiver before it can ring a second time.

“Yes, this is Sakurai.”

A staticky pause follows, then:

“It’s—it’s me, Aiba.”

Sho is frozen in shock for a moment, and then stands and begins gesturing frantically. Tohma spots him from across the room and starts towards him, but Sho covers the mouthpiece and hisses out “Trace the call, trace it—it’s Aiba—start the trace!” Luckily, Tohma is fairly quick on the uptake and dashes back across the room and shoves on a headset.

“Aiba,” Sho repeats, hoping he wasn’t silent for too long. “I’ve been worried, are you okay?” 

Keep him on the line, Sho tells himself, keep him talking. He needs to give Tohma the time to finish the trace. Not that he doesn’t trust Aiba to come back eventually, but Sho is working on a deadline here, and the sooner he locates Aiba, the better.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Aiba mutters. He sounds small and shy and embarrassed, and Sho’s heart breaks a little. “I was just…shocked, you know, and I couldn’t…well, anyway, I met someone really nice who took me out to eat—”

“You—what? You _met_ someone?”

“Yeah, don’t worry, he’s totally cool, he’s a college student. Well, like I said, he took me out to eat and I kind of spilled an entire bowl of ramen—on myself. So he’s letting me stay here till my clothes are clean.”

“Letting you…where are you, Aiba?” Sho doesn’t like this at all, this is completely sketchy and weird. He has visions of Aiba kidnapped, tied up, taken advantage of—maybe he’s letting his imagination go a little far, but still, this person is a complete stranger!

“Don’t worry,” Aiba says again, quickly, “and don’t—I don’t need help, I just need a little time to…to try and understand…all this.”

Aiba’s voice goes very quiet towards the end of his sentence. Sho hates himself for letting this happen, if he had just let Aiba go, if he had just been stronger…

He drops his head into his hand, covering eyes that are suddenly burning. “I’m so sorry, Masaki. I’m sorry you had to find out this way. But if you just come back, I’ll fix it. Somehow, I promise.”

“Sho-chan…” Aiba’s voice is still soft, aching. Sho feels his cheeks warm a bit, remembering that Tohma is listening in on this conversation, but he keeps trying.

“Where are you?” Sho says again.

The pause that follows is heavy, and Sho can hear Aiba’s shaky breathing through the phone. 

“I—” Aiba begins finally. “I’m fine. Don’t come—don’t worry. I just need time, I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“No, wait, Masaki, don’t—”

But there is a loud click, and then the drone of a line gone dead.

“Dammit.” Sho drops his head to the desk for a moment, then places the receiver gently back into its cradle. When he looks up, Tohma is already standing in front of him with a little slip of paper in his hand.

“I got it,” Tohma says triumphantly. Sho allows himself a little smile—small favors, he thinks wearily.

“Well, where is he, then?”

Tohma rattles off a residential address, somewhere downtown. “And the lease is under the name—” He squints at the kanji on his paper. “—Matsumoto Jun.”

Not for the first time during the last few hours, Sho feels like he’s just been punched in the stomach.

“Matsumoto…?”

Tohma nods, and raises an eyebrow at Sho’s obvious surprise.

 _Well_ , Sho thinks dazedly, _that makes things a little easier._

***

 _Kazu…?_

Satoshi’s keeps his voice soft, only just brushing the edges of Kazu’s consciousness. There’s no reply. Kazu is as fast asleep as he’s been for the past hour. Satoshi allows himself a little sigh of relief.

Though Kazu is dead to the world, Satoshi is still aware of his surroundings. It’s stuffy under the blankets with the late afternoon light streaming through the bedroom windows. He lets his control seep down to Kazu’s arms, enough to throw off the sheets and flop Kazu onto his stomach. A little better, at least. And at least Kazu is sleeping now.

It scared Satoshi, how frantic Kazu became after the transfer. It was almost as bad as it had been when he had started seeing the doctors, the ones who told him Satoshi wasn’t real. Memories flicker by, of a Kazu who is all skin and bones and dark circles under his eyes, with a smile that trembles at the edges and never stays on his face for long. Satoshi won’t let that happen again.

But he still wants to go back to the clinic.

Yes, it had been strange and frightening to be away from Kazu like that, however briefly. But it had also been exciting, somehow. In those first few moments, Satoshi had felt something. Potential. Possibility. Even now, vague what-ifs float through his mind: painting with his own hands, going places and seeing things and knowing no one else has seen them in quite the same way. Having his own memories. Part of him cringes at the thought—it seems cold, selfish. He’s always shared everything with Kazu. But surely it would be alright…it would be good to have something that was all his own.

Kazu’s lips part in a soft sigh, and Satoshi doesn’t know whose breath he is breathing.

Before his thoughts can wonder any farther, Satoshi hears the front door open, and voices coming muffled through the walls. He recognizes Jun’s low hum immediately, and while he doesn’t know the other voice, it seems familiar somehow. Two sets of footsteps start to move into the apartment, passing in front of Kazu’s door, close enough for Satoshi to make out their conversation.

“—some sweats that’ll probably fit you,” Jun murmurs. “It’ll do for a couple hours, anyway.”

“Thanks. I’m really, really sorry about this.”

Satoshi feels a flash of surprise when he recognizes Aiba’s voice. 

Before he’s even realized what he’s done, Satoshi is across the room and standing at the closed door. He blinks, and discovers he’s pushed himself into all of Kazu’s limbs, taken complete control, and tucked the other man down deep where he can’t be disturbed. He raises his—Kazu’s—hands experimentally, flexing the fingers. It’s been a long time since he’s done this, had complete control of Kazu’s body, and it’s the first time he’s ever taken it without permission.

It was so easy, though. He wonders if that should worry him. 

For the time being, he decides not to think too hard about it, because Kazu needs to rest, anyway, and Aiba is apparently in their apartment—and now that Satoshi is listening again, he can hear Aiba talking to someone. On the phone, it seems like, and then Satoshi catches the word “Sho-chan”.

Briefly, he panics. So, somehow, Aiba met up with Jun, found their apartment, and now he’s calling Sakurai, who’s going to come and take them back to the clinic for…what? Experiments or something? But, no, no, Aiba seems to be having some sort of argument with his partner, and he hears what sounds like “I’m fine…don’t come…talk to you later”, before Aiba hangs up a touch violently.

A door opens, and Satoshi can hear Jun’s voice again. “Here, you can wear these while we wash your clothes. Did you get in touch with your…friend?”

“Yeah,” Aiba answers. Footsteps cross the floor, a rustle, Aiba says “Thanks” and “I’ll just change in here,” and then there’s the sound of a door shutting again.

Satoshi has a hand on the doorknob as he listens to Jun shuffle off to the kitchen and start clattering around. While he’s still debating about whether or not to leave the bedroom, he hears the click of the gas range being lit, and realizes he—Kazu, really—hasn’t eaten since breakfast, and now it’s almost dinner time. Food is important, he tells himself. Before he can change his mind, he pulls open the door and steps out.

 _Act like Kazu_ , he tells himself, effecting a slouch and a scowl. Jun looks up in surprise when he walks through the kitchen door, stares at him for a beat, then looks away again quickly, back at the tea kettle as if glaring at it will make the water boil any faster.

“Jun,” Satoshi murmurs without thinking. His scowl is already a lost cause in the face of Jun’s obvious hurt and anger.

Jun grunts a response, but doesn’t look up again. Satoshi takes a few cautious steps forward, wondering if it’s really wise to say anything else. In the week or so since they met Aiba and Sakurai—and what happened with Jun afterward—Kazu and Jun have barely spoken, barely seen each other. But Satoshi never wanted to hurt Jun like this, and it’s hard to just walk away when he can see it all in Jun’s face. The younger man tries to be blank and unreadable when he’s this upset, but Satoshi can see it in the stiffness of his shoulders, the set of his jaw—anger, hurt, discomfort, and most of all a desperate desire for everything to be okay again.

“Listen, Jun,” Satoshi says, forgetting about food for a moment. “What we—what I said the other day, it really wasn’t—”

“Stop,” Jun growls. “I don’t want to hear it. Unless you’re going to apologize for being a complete asshole, I do not want to hear it.”

Their eyes meet, then, and Satoshi sees the sadness behind Jun’s scowl.

“I _was_ a complete asshole,” Satoshi concedes softly. “And I am sorry.”

For a moment, Jun’s brows only furrow deeper in confusion. “You—” he stutters after a pause, “that’s not…you’re acting weird.”

“It’s been a weird week,” Satoshi replies, finally moving towards the refrigerator and pawing around inside. Damn, he wishes Kazu wasn’t so cheap and Jun wasn’t so picky—his only choices for something quick to eat are a stick of string cheese or a jar of olives. He takes the string cheese.

“Is everything…okay?” Jun asks hesitantly when Satoshi reappears from the fridge. The other man seems reluctant to evidence any concern, but then Jun’s always had a little bit of a protective streak. “You’re not in trouble or anything, are you?”

“Not exactly,” Satoshi says with his mouth full. “I just…kind of got involved with something, some people—”

“People like Satoshi?” Jun interrupts, suddenly cold again.

At first, Satoshi blinks in confusion, then, _Ah, right, I’m Kazu_. “No, that—look, about Satoshi, there’s something I really need to—”

But before he can finish, Jun’s bedroom door opens and Aiba walks out with an armful of ramen-soiled clothes. “Jun-kun, where’s the washing machine? I can start these if— _Ninomiya-kun_?”

“Uhh…” Satoshi stares at Aiba wide-eyed, not really prepared for what this meeting will entail. Belatedly, he realizes this was not exactly a well thought out plan.

“Do you,” Aiba says, glancing between Satoshi-Kazu and Jun. “Is this your roommate?”

“Yeah,” Satoshi and Jun say at the same time, Satoshi with a trace of guilt in his voice, and Jun with a heavy dollop of surprise and suspicion.

“You two know each other?” Jun asks, crossing his arms and raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” Aiba says at the same time as Satoshi mutters “Sort of.”

After another heavy pause, Jun slams a hand down onto the counter and turns his glare back on Satoshi.

“Alright, something weird is going on here, Nino. You’ve been acting strange ever since—” Jun cuts himself off, then continues in a carefully controlled tone. “I’m tired of always being on the sidelines with you. Tell me what’s going on.”

Aiba is still rather wide-eyed after Jun’s sudden outburst, but then he turns to Satoshi and in an expert demonstration of his lack of tact, says: “He doesn’t know about Satoshi?”

Satoshi shakes his head quickly, even though it’s too late, shooting Aiba a look that says “Please shut up”, but Jun is already straightening up indignantly.

“Last chance,” Jun says, just barely holding in his temper, “who is Satoshi?”

And Satoshi just stares at him with his mouth hanging open. This is all wrong, this is _not_ how he wanted to tell Jun. But he’s in this deep, he might as well just take the plunge.

“I am,” he says with a helpless shrug. “I’m Satoshi.”

For a moment, Jun’s face is blank with shock. But after a few slow blinks, his anger is back full-force, and he throws his hands up and stalks out of the room.

“Right, good, great. Hilarious,” he says in a low murderous tone. 

Satoshi feels a tightness in his chest, and is glad Kazu is asleep—this is what he always said would happen, this is what he feared, and now it _is_ happening and it’s all Satoshi’s fault. He dashes after Jun, with no real idea of what he’s going to do or how to fix this.

“Jun, wait, please—” He reaches out for Jun’s arm, and before the other man can jerk away he feels something—a jolt, a push—that makes him stagger back a few steps.

“Back off,” Jun growls, and there’s a push in his voice, too. Satoshi’s hold on Kazu’s body feels suddenly precarious, like he’s on the edge of a precipice hanging on by his fingertips. 

He’s vaguely aware of Jun saying something else—quiet, hurt, angry—and of Aiba coming up beside him, but it’s taking most of his concentration to keep the tentative control he still has. Through the roar in his ears, he hears Aiba ask if he’s okay, and then the other man reaches out with a steadying hand.

For a moment, he thinks he can climb back up, the warm point of connection where Aiba’s hand grips his arm like a lifeline. But the longer the touch lasts, the fainter he feels. There’s something spreading out from their point of contact, washing over him in heavy waves, and suddenly he’s seeing flashes, pictures, memories—

_—shards of sunlight reflected off a river, dirt under his fingernails as he—a bicycle bell ringing and warm arms tight at his waist—Kazu and Masaki, arms around each other’s shoulders, laughing and laughing, because Satoshi still—reaching out for Jun’s hand, because he looks so young and scared and this could be—“No,” Sho is saying, “it’s too late for that, we have to”—a piece of paper fluttering across the sidewalk under a flickering streetlight—his hands on Kazu’s face, pulling him closer, roughly, needing him—_

The last thing Satoshi hears before he falls is the high, piercing whistle of the tea kettle.


	6. Chapter 6

Before he can slam his bedroom door, Jun hears a thud, hears Aiba saying “Ninomiya-kun!” and turns in surprise to see Nino hitting the floor. He’s still so angry, a part of him just wants to ignore it, shut himself in his room and let Aiba deal with Nino and how bizarre he’s been acting.

But he doesn’t. He’s crouched down next to Nino seconds later, shaking him by the shoulder.

“Nino? Nino!” He looks up at Aiba, kneeling on Nino’s other side with a panicked expression. The clothes he was holding are scattered across the floor. “What happened?” Jun demands.

Aiba shakes his head. “I don’t know!” he says, sounding almost close to tears. “I just…He just, all of a sudden—” Aiba keeps making useless little gestures, his hand against Nino’s forehead, his throat, gripping at his arm and chest. “Wake up, Kazu, please—”

For a few moments, Jun can only stare, first at Aiba, then at Nino, who is still and pale, with a little furrow between his brows. Jun doesn’t really know anything about first-aid, but he bats Aiba’s hands away and finds the pulse in Nino’s neck. It seems regular enough, he supposes, and Nino is still breathing.

“Help me,” he tells Aiba, and then moves around to lift Nino by the shoulders. Aiba takes the cue, and gets a grip on Nino’s legs and together they carry him over to the couch. Jun starts to take out his phone, to call an ambulance, something, when Aiba suddenly grabs him by the wrist.

“Wait! Who…?”

Jun snatches his hand away again, rubbing his wrist where Aiba touched him. It didn’t hurt, just…he could have sworn, for a second, he saw—but no. He shakes himself out of it, raising his hand again and starting to dial. “We have to get him to the hospital.”

“Don’t!” Aiba almost yells, and Jun stops out of pure shock. “We can’t—we can’t get anyone involved…”

“He _passed out_ ,” Jun says, his own voice rising. “He is unconscious, for apparently no reason, and we’re just going to…what, hope he gets better?”

Aiba opens his mouth, closes it again, pushes his hands through his hair. “None of this was supposed to happen,” he mutters, staring and staring at Nino’s prone form.

Jun feels his helpless anger rising again. A week ago—just one week—his life was normal. He was a normal student at a normal college, and while his love life was perhaps a little deviant, overall that had been normal, too, he thought. The thing with Nino was just a thing, a casual friendly thing, but apparently it had meant more than he realized. Because as soon as he heard Nino say “Satoshi”, something had sprung to life in his chest, hot and fierce, and even after Nino had shot him down so completely, Jun just couldn’t stop thinking about it.

And now this, this random stranger who seems so familiar appears out of nowhere, and somehow he knows Nino, knows about Satoshi, whoever he is, and more than anything, Jun wants to know, too. He needs to know. And he will not let anything bad happen to Nino. He will not.

“Tell me,” Jun says sharply. Against his better judgment he puts his phone away, then turns to face Aiba fully. “Nino’s been acting weird for a while, he won’t talk to me, and then I meet you, and it turns out you know each other, and this whole Satoshi business—” He cuts himself off, takes a calming breath. “Tell me what’s going on, or I’m throwing you out and calling an ambulance.”

Aiba turns his wide, scared eyes to Jun and doesn’t speak for a moment. Aiba still has his hands in his hair, and he’s wearing Jun’s grey and purple track suit—Jun remembers the ramen spilling incident suddenly, though it already seems like it happened days ago. Aiba looks so young and lost, and all of a sudden Jun feels a burst of affection that is strangely strong, seeing as he just met this guy earlier today. Without really thinking about it, Jun reaches out and puts a hand on Aiba’s shoulder, to soften his words. And then it happens again.

_—Masaki’s face, close to tears, desperately gripping Jun’s hands, saying “Jun, Jun, you don’t have to do this, it’s too dangerous”—_

Jun tears his hand away with a gasp, stumbles back a few steps. Aiba looks just as surprised as he does, staring at Jun like he saw it too, like he _knows_.

“How did you do that?” Jun says, trying to keep his voice from shaking. “How do you keep doing that?”

“I don’t…” Aiba shakes his head a little. “I didn’t mean to.”

“What the hell is going on?” Jun demands again. He clenches his hands into fists to still their trembling. “Tell me what is going on.” 

Aiba is silent for a moment, watching Jun with a deep, measuring stare. Then he nods, just fractionally.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, so low it almost seems unconscious. “Okay.”

Aiba sits down, right there on the floor in front of the couch, as if he doesn’t want to move away from Nino even to sit in the armchair nearby. Jun joins him on the hardwood, feeling a little baffled, but he’s too shaken up to protest. Aiba ruffles his hair up even more while he organizes his thoughts, then drops his hands to his lap and looks up at Jun again.

“First,” he says, “you have to promise to believe me.”

Jun blinks a few times. “…okay?”

“No, really,” Aiba insists. “A lot of what I’m going to tell you is probably going to sound totally crazy, but it’s the truth, and if you don’t believe me you’re just going to get mad again, so…”

Jun furrows his brows and squeezes his eyes shut briefly. Aiba’s logic is a bit headache-inducing. 

“I will…do my very best,” he compromises, and Aiba nods, seeming to settle for that.

“Okay. Well, I work for this organization called the ASD, it stands for ‘All Souls Division’.”

Jun quirks an eyebrow. Even with his limited grasp of English, the name sounds weird, and definitely fake, but Aiba is going on, so Jun restrains his skepticism for the time being.

“It’s, like, a secret agency,” Aiba continues, fiddling nervously with the zipper on his track suit. “And, well, it’s hard to explain everything about it, but the main thing is that they deal with a lot of, you know, paranormal stuff—ghosts and spirits and past lives.”

“Uh huh,” Jun says slowly.

“But it’s science, too!” Aiba says emphatically. “They’re working on lots of different technology that—never mind, never mind. Okay. So, I work for them because I’m a Decoder, I’m someone who can remember stuff from my past lives, and sometimes I can make other people remember stuff, too.”

Jun’s mouth is hanging open just a little. While he’s kind of blown away that Aiba expects him to believe this insanity, a little voice in the back of his mind is whispering _déjà vu_. 

“And, so, anyway, I just started working as a full agent and me and Sho-chan—” Aiba’s voice falters a little here, his brows come together, but he shakes himself out of it quickly. “—me and my partner, we were working on this controlled migration project, right? Like, directing souls to their next body, but we weren’t having a lot of luck with the experiments we were doing with the old people and the babies, because babies, you know, already have souls when they’re born, and we couldn’t figure out what stage in a pregnancy that the soul actually transfers—”

“You were experimenting on babies?” Jun interjects.

“No, no, didn’t I just say—” but Aiba cuts himself off with a wave of his hands. “Anyway, the important thing is, we decided to try something else, and that’s how we ended up contacting Ninomiya-kun and Satoshi. They were so healthy and, like, _sane_ , even though they were sharing a body, Sho said it would be a lot easier for—”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Jun cuts in belatedly, his mind still reeling. “Did you just…did you just say _sharing a body_?”

“Yes,” Aiba affirms with a brisk nod. “There are two souls in Ninomiya-kun’s body.”

“And the other soul is called Satoshi?”

Aiba nods again.

Jun can only stare at him. “This is insane,” he says finally.

“You promised to believe me,” Aiba reminds him.

“I promised to try,” Jun mutters, rubbing his temples. “You’re making it increasingly difficult.”

“But here’s the thing,” Aiba continues urgently, apparently unperturbed by Jun’s scowl. “I think…I mean, I _know_ I remember them, I knew that when we were given the assignment and I thought it was weird, but Sho-chan said it would be fine—”

“What do you mean, you ‘remember’ them?” Jun asks, sighing at the ridiculousness of all of this.

“Like, from before. From a past life.”

Jun’s not sure his eyebrow can get any higher on his forehead. “Isn’t that an awfully big coincidence?” 

“I know, right?” Aiba says enthusiastically. “I mean, since I already knew Sho-chan before, I thought it was so weird that it just _happened_ that I knew these two guys, too, and now you—”

“What about me?” Jun says, narrowing his eyes.

“Well, I remember you, too. You said so, too, didn’t you? ‘Déjà vu’?”

“That’s—I—” Jun splutters, but he can’t deny that there is something familiar about Aiba, in more than just a he-looks-like-someone-famous way. If Jun believed in that kind of thing, he might say it’s almost a maybe-I-knew-him-in-a-past-life way. And there are those visions, or whatever it was that happened every time Aiba touched him, seeing things that felt like memories but that Jun _knows_ have never happened to him.

“Insane,” he finishes weakly.

“I know,” Aiba agrees, but probably for different reasons. He looks back over to Nino, who seems to still be breathing steadily.

“Do you know what happened to him?” Jun asks quietly.

Aiba starts to shake his head, stops, chews on his lip. “Well…”

“Tell me,” Jun says. “You said you’d tell me.”

Aiba’s gaze flicks over to Jun nervously. “I’m not sure. But. Well, it’s not good for two souls to be in one body for too long. It can start to…deteriorate.”

“ _What?_ ” 

The faintest, sad little smile curls the corner of Aiba’s mouth. “I thought you didn’t believe me?”

“I promised I would, didn’t I?” Jun snaps. “Anyway, what do we do about it? Can we…I don’t know, get the other soul out, or…?”

“Not without the right equipment,” Aiba says, and Jun has sudden visions of little soul-vacuums that put him near the point of hysterical laughter. “And anyway,” Aiba continues, “we don’t have a body to put him into.”

“Do we need one? Can’t we just send it off into the ether or something?” 

“No!” Aiba says immediately. “If we just put Satoshi back in-cycle we might never meet him again! We can’t do that to them!”

“Why not?” Jun shoots back.

“They’ve been together their whole lives,” Aiba says softly. “They love each other.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Jun replies, too quickly, because part of him thinks _maybe it does_.

“Why not?” Aiba asks, echoing Jun’s earlier question, and Jun doesn’t have an answer for him.

Jun stands and starts pacing in frustration. “So we just let Nino ‘deteriorate’? What if he dies?”

Aiba sighs heavily and drops his head into his hands again. “No, no, but…I just—I don’t—”

Before he can say any more, there is a faint groan from the couch, and they both turn quickly to see Nino stirring. Aiba rises to his knees, and Jun drops down beside him, a hand on Nino’s chest.

“Nino,” he says softly, reassured by the heartbeat under his hand. “Nino, can you—”

They are interrupted by a loud knock on the door.


	7. Chapter 7

Nino wakes to a dream. At least, he was sure he was sleeping, and he is sure that he isn’t sleeping now, but he is most definitely not awake. Everything is foggy awareness, and all he can think is that it is a dream.

 _A memory_ , comes Satoshi’s voice nearby. Nino turns toward it without moving, because he can’t move, because he’s not really here.

With that thought comes the realization that he is _somewhere_ —a dusty riverbank under an orange sky. There are figures by the bank, silhouetted against the flashing water.

 _We’re remembering_ , Satoshi says, closer now, closer, until they’re wrapped up together and Nino can feel the shame and sorrow Satoshi is radiating.

_I messed up, Kazu, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry._

In flashes, Nino sees what Satoshi saw, what Satoshi did, in his body. Sees the anger and disbelief in Jun’s face. He thinks maybe he should be mad, but all Nino feels is a dull resignation. It was bound to happen, sooner or later.

 _Never mind_ , he tells Satoshi gently, _it’s fine. We’re fine. Where are we?_

 _Remembering_ , Satoshi replies vaguely, and Nino feels the other man’s focus shift to the figures by the river. _Masaki helped us remember._

_Masaki…?_

Confusion curls through Nino’s consciousness, but now he’s watching the boys by the river, too, and seeing them.

_Us._

Kazu, and Satoshi, crouched down by the water, skipping stones. They are not so different, but for dirty knees, strange old fashioned clothes and sandals that don’t fit well. As Nino watches, he sees the scene from the outside, and through the eyes of the young man on the riverbank. For the first time, and all over again.

“I saw Masaki today,” Kazu says, tossing a stone for five quick skips.

Satoshi glances over at him, asking without asking.

“He said Sho-chan is getting worse,” Kazu says, hurling his next stone so that it just sinks with a big splash.

Satoshi sighs, and after a moment, slides an arm around Kazu’s shoulders. The other boy stiffens a little before leaning into the touch.

“We’ll figure something out,” Satoshi says quietly. “We’ll help him.”

“How?” Kazu wants to know. “The doctors don’t even know what’s _wrong_ with him, he just keeps getting sicker—”

“We’ll help him,” Satoshi says again. “Somehow.”

Kazu takes a breath like he might argue, but then just lets it out on a long sigh.

The sunlight off the water seems to grow brighter, flashing faster and faster, flashing, flashing—

_Flash._

Kazu crouches outside the door, outside the circle of light from Sho’s little bedside lamp, hidden in the shadows. Everyone else is still in the room, but Kazu just can’t do it any more. He can’t look down into Sho’s face and _see_ how he’s dying. He can hear Sho start to cough again, hear Masaki murmuring soothing words, and he wants to plug his ears.

After a time, Jun joins him in the hall, sitting down close but not touching. Kazu knows that Jun is the same—he doesn’t like not being able to fix things, he doesn’t like everyone telling him “there’s nothing you can do”.

“Hey,” Jun says after a long stretch of silence. “There’s something…do you want to hear something crazy?”

Kazu just shrugs, but apparently this is encouragement enough.

“The other day,” Jun continues, “I was waiting for the bus, and this man came up to me. I’ve never seen this guy before in my life, but he looks at me and says ‘I can help you’. I asked him what he was talking about and he said he knew about my friend. He said he could see that someone close to me was dying.” 

Jun shudders a bit at the memory. Kazu just watches him intently.

“He gave me this,” Jun says, pulling out a business card. “Told me to come to his place if I wanted his help.”

Kazu takes the little piece of stiff paper, reading it quickly. There’s a name in kanji, and a telephone number and address for someplace called “Kitagawa Clinic”.

“A doctor?” Kazu asks.

Jun gives a little shrug. “I guess.”

“We’ve tried doctors,” Kazu reminds him. “Lots of doctors.”

“Wouldn’t hurt to try one more,” Jun says. He’s staring contemplatively at his hands, twisting and untwisting his fingers. “There was something…I don’t think this guy was a regular doctor. I just thought that maybe…”

Kazu is not especially surprised when Satoshi is suddenly kneeling down behind him, reaching around for the card. Jun jumps a little at the intrusion, but both the younger boys wait in expectant silence.

“We should try it,” he says softly. He looks up, straight at Kazu, with the kind of focus he reserves for very important occasions. 

And Kazu finds himself nodding slowly, keeping his eyes locked on Satoshi’s.

“Yeah. Let’s try it.”

_Flash._

It is pouring down rain. They’ve got Sho under an umbrella, bundled up as best they could manage, while the rest of them form a human barrier around him to keep out as much of the damp as possible.

“You know,” Sho says irritably, muffled by his many layers, “I’m not made of sugar, I’m pretty sure a little rain wouldn’t kill me.”

“It wouldn’t help you, either,” Kazu snaps back. 

“Sho’s parents are only going to be gone a couple of hours,” Masaki cuts in. “Jun, where is this place?”

“It should be right around here,” Jun reassures him, scanning the shop fronts through the downpour. “It’s this street, I’m sure—there!”

He points ahead, to a three-story brick building with the words “Kitagawa Clinic” painted on a large sign over the entrance. They hurry across the street and push their way inside, shaking off the rain and looking around as the front doors close behind them. 

The waiting room is fairly small and nondescript, white and beige with some watercolor paintings on the walls. The strangest thing is that it is completely empty, but for a receptionist and a man standing by the front desk. He turns to look at them as they enter, and Kazu notes his very nice three-piece suit and the little grin that seems to be a permanent fixture at the corner of his mouth. His eyes fix on Jun with a light of recognition.

“Hello,” Jun says, stepping forward a bit awkwardly. “I, uh. We met the other day, you gave me your card…”

“Yes, I remember,” the man says—Nakai, if Kazu read the name on the card right. He looks them over with that same little smile. “This is a few more visitors than I was expecting.”

“Um. Sorry,” Jun mutters. “Well. This is—this is my friend, the one who—”

Jun cuts himself off, but Nakai doesn’t seem to notice, just watches Sho step forward on weak and unsteady legs. He doesn’t need to say anymore, really. The deep circles under Sho’s eyes, the pale skin, the skeletal limbs tell it well enough. Nakai takes a few steps forward and reaches out to catch Sho’s chin in his hand, staring at him hard. Sho jerks a little at the touch, but clenches his jaw, determined not to look away.

Everyone seems to be holding their breath, filling the cramped space with expectant silence. Kazu feels Satoshi’s hand slide into his own, and he grips back, perhaps a little harder than he needs to. Nakai is still staring and staring at Sho. Then, he tilts his head and his little smile turns to a frown.

“Interesting,” he murmurs. He drops his hand back to his side and, as he does, starts to look over all of them with a new curiosity in his eyes.

“Can you help him?” Masaki says urgently. He reaches out instinctively when Sho wobbles, supporting him.

Nakai’s gaze settles on Masaki, and his mouth twitches back to a grin. “I’ll have to consult with my colleagues,” he says. After another pause he asks: “Would you mind if I ran a few tests?”

_Flash._

“We can’t save his body,” Nakai says, and the atmosphere in the room darkens immediately. Masaki, who had gotten his hopes up despite knowing he shouldn’t, gives a strangled little hiccup, but swallows it while blinking rapidly to clear his watery eyes. Sho just gives a kind of resigned sigh. Kazu can hear Jun cursing softly, and beside him, Satoshi stays quiet.

“However,” Nakai continues, “we can save his soul.”

The only response to this statement is dead silence.

“What?” Sho finally says.

“Your soul,” Nakai says again. “As you know very well by now, we do not use traditional medical practices here at the ASD. We have been working on a technology to aid in the transfer of a soul from one body to another. Using it, we can move your soul into a Carrier until we find another body for you.”

“A Carrier…?” Sho echoes faintly.

“Until we find you another body, someone else will have to carry your soul alongside their own. As this can be dangerous for someone without the proper experience, we have a specially trained agent who can assist you.”

After another round of stunned silence, Satoshi speaks up softly.

“Could we have a moment, please?”

Nakai nods and leaves the room.

“This is insane,” Jun says as soon as the door is closed. “I’m sorry, Sho-chan, I really just thought this would be some kind of new-age, homeopathic thing, I didn’t think they would actually talk about removing your _soul_ —”

“What if they can?” Sho interrupts. Everyone is shocked into silence, watching Sho staring at his hands.

“You can’t really believe—” Kazu starts, but Sho cuts him off.

“But what if they can?” he says again. “I mean, probably nothing will come of it. Worst case scenario: I die. And that’s going to happen anyway.”

“Don’t say that,” Jun pleads, but Sho’s eyes catch his, and hold.

“It’s true,” he says quietly. “It’s true. And I’m terrified. If there’s anything, any way…” 

“I’ll do it,” Masaki says suddenly, gripping Sho’s arm and turning to look at him. “The Carrier, or whatever it is—I’ll carry you, until…”

Kazu sees the way Sho is looking at Masaki, the way they are looking at each other, and drops his own gaze to the floor. He listens to the rest of the conversation with his eyes on his shoes.

“It could be dangerous,” Sho murmurs. “Nakai-sensei said—”

“I don’t care,” Masaki answers, determined. “I don’t care.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Kazu sees Masaki lean forward, hears the quick intake of breath and the sound of meeting lips, and Jun’s little startled squawk. 

He turns away, feeling his own cheeks coloring, to find himself facing Satoshi, who is watching the other two with sharp eyes and a look of intense concentration.

_Flash._

The contraption Nakai has prepared for them looks something like a computer, the big processors that Kazu has seen pictures of—ugly and boxy, with lots of odd knobs and lights, and a clunky keyboard on top next to a small, grainy screen. It’s only about the size of a low chest of drawers, and there are two rings on the top that almost look like they came off of an electric stove.

“You’ve arranged everything at home?” Nakai asks Sho again. “Remember, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, you will be dead.”

“I know,” Sho replies with a jerky wave of his hand. “I have. I’m ready.”

Nakai then turns to Masaki. “And you’re sure about this?”

Masaki just nods, gripping Sho’s hand and staring hard at the machine in front of them.

Finally, Nakai turns to Kazu, Satoshi, and Jun, lined up against the wall near the door. “And you three—you’re sure you want to be here for this?”

“Yes,” Kazu snaps, and Jun gives him a quelling look. “Yes,” he says again, softer.

Nakai just shrugs and turns back to the machine.

“I still think this thing is butt-ugly,” says Katori, one of the other four doctors—or agents, as Kazu supposes is the correct term—who has joined them for the transfer. Katori is currently staring at the machine, which Nakai called “The Reader”, with his hands on his hips. The other three agents are spread out around the room in varying states of attentiveness.

“Helpful, Shingo-kun, really,” Nakai says distractedly, from where he is punching buttons on the machine. “Next time I’ll let you paint flowers on it or something.”

“Or I could just—” Kimura begins, but Kusanagi shoots him a warning glance. Kimura snaps his mouth shut and wanders over to where Inagaki is making a detailed inspection of his fingernails.

“I don’t like this,” Jun says, low. 

Kazu blows an irritated sigh out through his nose. “It’s a little late for that.”

Jun just shakes his head, and Kazu turns to his other side, to Satoshi. The other boy looks up when he feels Kazu’s gaze on him. He doesn’t speak, but Kazu can see all the nerves, hesitation, and most of all, the hope in his troubled expression. Kazu nods to Satoshi’s unspoken question.

_It’ll be all right. It has to be all right._

“Okay,” Nakai says at last, “Sho-kun, here, and Masaki-kun, here, and then your hands on these rings.”

Sho and Masaki both sit, each in a chair next to the Reader, facing each other, expressions tight and backs stiff. Nakai fiddles with some buttons and dials before saying “You may feel a little tingle.”

Almost at the same time, both boys shudder, but keep their hands where they are. Kimura joins Nakai at the Reader, watching over his shoulder. The low rumbling hum that the machine has been emitting goes up an octave, and a light on the console starts blinking. 

“Now,” Nakai says urgently, “the transfer is going to start in just a moment. It takes a few minutes for the whole process to finish, but whatever happens, _do not_ take your hands off the rings. In fact, Tsuyoshi-kun, can you stand here with Sho—”

“I’ll do it,” Jun says, stepping forward quickly. He moves around behind Sho, placing his hands on the other boy’s shoulders with a reassuring squeeze. Nakai just nods, and presses one more button with an air of finality.

It is distressingly anticlimactic. There is silence in the room except for the whir of the Reader, and it stretches and stretches, until Kazu feels ready to break. Eventually, he just can’t stand still any longer. He marches forward, pulling Satoshi along with him, and places himself behind Masaki. It’s been all of them in this together from the beginning, and he wants Sho to know that, to see it. Kazu fixes his eyes on Sho’s, and receives a tiny, tense smile in return. 

_It’s not going to work_ , Kazu thinks. _Nothing’s going to happen._

And then something does.

All of a sudden, Sho’s eyes flutter shut and he slumps over, Jun’s grip on him the only thing keeping him from sliding to the floor. He is completely limp and still, a puppet with its strings cut, and for a moment, they all just stare at each other. Then it hits—Kazu feels it like a punch to the stomach, sickening and painful and startling.

Sho is dead.

Aiba lets out a low, choked cry and lurches forward a bit in his seat, but doesn’t leave it. Kazu and Satoshi both have their hands at his shoulders. They are all waiting, and Nakai must feel the tension in the air.

“Almost,” he murmurs, staring hard at the monitor on the Reader. “Almost, just wait, wait, just—”

The flashing light on the console suddenly stops, and the machine starts emitting a shrill beep. Nakai stares incredulous at the screen.

“No!” he yells at it, giving the box a hard slap. He begins frantically punching something into the keyboard, as he yells to Kusanagi. “Tsuyoshi, get over here—”

But Kusanagi is already there, standing by Sho’s end of the Reader, one hand holding Sho’s wrist and keeping it in place, the other hand poised as if preparing to place it on the ring.

“What? What is it?” Masaki asks, frantic. “What happened to Sho, where is he?”

“It’s fine,” Nakai says, and Kazu gets the distinct impression it is a bold-faced lie. Nakai is sweating visibly, and there is a deep panicked line between his brows.

“It’s fine,” he says again, “I’ve just…Got him!” 

The light on the Reader starts flashing again, but only for a moment before Masaki suddenly gasps and jerks upright in his seat. 

“Sho-chan,” he murmurs, and then in a very different voice: “Where am I? What—Masaki, what’s happening—” He cuts himself off again, with a pained sound. “Nng, Sho-chan, don’t—I’m right here, you’re fine, you’re fine—”

Before the other boys can do much more than stare, Inagaki is suddenly at Masaki’s side, pulling him gently from his seat and towards the door. Masaki is groaning and holding his head now, still talking in two different voices, and then they’re gone.

“It worked?” Satoshi says hesitantly. Kazu blinks, dazed, and turns to him, but away again almost immediately because there is a clatter and he looks over to see Jun on the floor, cradling Sho’s body. He is silent, rocking a little, and there are tears on his face.

“Dead,” Jun whispers when Kazu and Satoshi crouch down next to him. “After everything, he’s still—”

He cuts himself off when Nakai and Kimura come to stand over them. Nakai’s face is carefully schooled to blankness, but there is a trace of sympathy around Kimura’s eyes. 

“Take him home,” Nakai says.

_Flash._

It is utterly, utterly bizarre to be at Sho’s funeral, in front of the black draped photo of Sho’s smiling face and the casket holding Sho’s body, when Kazu knows that, for all intents and purposes, Sho is standing right next to him, in Masaki’s body.

They bow to Sho’s parents, murmur their condolences, then escape out the back door as soon as is politely possible. Sho’s house is big enough to have a sizeable garden out back, and Masaki wanders over to the bench under the plum tree to sit down. Kazu follows him but remains standing, staring up at the murky grey sky. He knows Jun and Satoshi are here somewhere, but Jun has been taking the whole thing very hard and Satoshi was always the best at handling him.

“How are you doing?” Kazu asks finally.

Masaki makes a noncommittal grunt, then sighs, running a hand across his forehead. After the transfer, Inagaki helped him, and Sho, to adjust to the whole sharing-a-body thing, so at least they’re not always talking over each other. But the headaches, the dizziness, won’t seem to let up. Kazu sits himself down next to Masaki on the bench.

“Your appetite back yet?”

Masaki shrugs. “A little. I’ve been eating,” he adds defensively, at Kazu’s pointed stare. Then, for a moment, his eyes lose their focus, go distant. “It _is_ enough,” he says, seemingly to himself, but Kazu knows who he’s really talking to.

“Sho-chan?” Kazu asks, feeling a little guilty, knowing it’s hard for them to switch, but he just. He misses Sho, so much. He watches Masaki’s face as it changes—the way he holds his head, just a little different, the set of his jaw, and his eyes. Sho’s eyes, now.

“Nakai said it wouldn’t be long,” Sho says immediately. “He says they’re working on—on building me a new body.”

“Building? Like a robot or something?”

“No—well, I don’t know, really. He didn’t…really say.”

“Be kind of cool, though,” Kazu ventures, earning himself a tiny smile from Sho.

As they lapse back into silence, Kazu looks up to see Jun and Satoshi approaching from around the side of the house, and finds himself really _looking_ at them, for the first time, maybe. 

Jun, the youngest, but so much older now. Somehow, in the short time since the transfer, age has settled into the lines of his face, his shoulders, and there is a burning, desperate determination in his eyes that Kazu is a little afraid of.

And Satoshi. Always right there, at Kazu’s side, always within reach. Kazu realizes, suddenly, that he takes this for granted. What would it be like if something happened, like with Sho, what if Satoshi suddenly wasn’t there where Kazu could reach out and touch him? He pushes the thought away, because the yawning void left by that question is too much, too big, to think about.

_Flash._

“It’s taking too long,” Kazu says. “Masaki can’t handle it, he’s…I don’t know, it’s like he’s just falling apart.”

“They warned him,” Satoshi points out, but he sounds worried, too. “They said it could be difficult.”

They keep their voices low, secretive, because even up on the roof, even with everyone else asleep, they can’t risk being overheard. It’s been almost two months since the transfer. The summer heat is finally setting in, making the night air heavy and damp. Satoshi shifts a little closer on the tiles, and Kazu notices. He always notices, now.

“Jun wants to Carry him,” Satoshi says after a few moments of silence. “Sho, I mean. He’s afraid something bad will happen to Masaki, and…well, you know Jun. He feels guilty, like it should have been him.”

“Stupid,” Kazu scoffs, but there’s a part of him that feels the same. Guilt, that none of the rest of them even volunteered, that he didn’t do _something_. “What can he do except fall apart, too? We’ll just have to talk to Nakai and…we’ll figure something out.”

They fall quiet again, listening to the little nighttime sounds—an animal scuttling through the alley, footsteps and laughter a few streets over by the bar, and over all of it the drone of cicadas, so loud Kazu thinks he can feel it in his bones. Like he feels the warmth of Satoshi’s body, only a hairsbreadth away. It’s such a careful distance between them now, ever since Kazu starting thinking about what it would mean to lose it.

“Kazu,” Satoshi says eventually, careful like the space between them. “If something ever happened to you, you know I would—I’d do anything. I’d Carry you, if—”

“Shut up,” Kazu says. He has his knees drawn up to his chest, and he hides his face there. He knows what Satoshi is trying to do, and he wants it, but…But if they close this last bit of distance, if they make that change, it will just be harder, won’t it? If something ever happened to Satoshi, it would be so much harder if Kazu let himself admit how much he cares.

“Kazu,” Satoshi says again, more firmly. He reaches out, tugging at Kazu’s arm, easing him out of his defensive curl, until he has a hand on either side of Kazu’s face. “You have to know this. If something happened and I never told you—”

“It’s better, if you don’t,” Kazu interrupts a little desperately, even though he knows they’ve waded into the deepest part of this already, and going back will be just as hard as going forward. “It won’t hurt as much if you don’t.”

“It would,” Satoshi counters, voice even, inexorable. Kazu reaches up to grasp Satoshi’s wrists, but doesn’t quite get around to pulling him away.

“It won’t help anything.”

Satoshi smiles, a little sadly. “It doesn’t have to.”

“But—”

“I love you,” Satoshi says, before Kazu can protest any further.

Kazu lets out a shaking breath, lets Satoshi pull him in, and gives up that last little distance.

_Flash._

Masaki comes to them in tears, shaking and ashen. He feels paper-thin in Kazu’s arms.

“I told him not to, we told him it was too dangerous,” Masaki is babbling, eyes and nose running, making a dark spot on Kazu’s shirt. “And I had to—to leave him there, I didn’t know what to do, the agents are taking care of—of him—but they’re going to—”

“Slow down, slow down,” Kazu tells him, taking the dishcloth Satoshi just handed him and trying to clean up Masaki’s face. “Left who where? What happened? Is it Sho-chan?”

“Jun!” Masaki sobs, gripping Kazu’s shirt as hard as he can. “He took us back to the clinic, made them try another transfer, but something—I don’t know what happened, the machine malfunctioned, or—and then, Jun, he just…”

“What?” Satoshi pushes when Masaki stops, frozen and staring. “What happened to him?”

Masaki turns to Satoshi in a kind of horrified daze. “He’s…gone.”

_Flash._

Jun dead, Masaki dying, and Sho stuck somewhere in between unless the Host body Nakai has been promising them is finished soon. Kazu feels like he is wandering through his own life, empty and useless.

People are starting to look at them funny, rumors are popping up, now that two of their friends are gone and the third is mysteriously fading away. Kazu has no answers to their suspicious looks, their veiled questions. Always, now, he feels a boiling helpless rage just under his skin, he doesn’t know how to let it out. And then they are alone, and Satoshi touches him, and he snaps.

He has Satoshi against the wall, devouring his mouth, tearing at his clothes, trying to get closer, closer—he needs to, needs this, something to hold onto.

Kazu doesn’t really know what he’s doing, but Satoshi lets him push and fumble, until they are both sweating and trembling and close to the edge.

“Stay with me,” Kazu begs, without meaning to speak.

“Always,” Satoshi promises. He pulls Kazu even closer. “Always.”

They reach the precipice and fall together.

_Flash._

For almost a week, the agents have been keeping Masaki at the clinic. To monitor his condition, they said. Kazu and Satoshi don’t find out that the Host transfer was successful, that it even _happened_ , until they come in to visit Masaki and find Sho waiting for them in the lobby.

At first, Kazu just stares, gripping Satoshi’s arm hard enough to leave bruises. His heart is in his throat, and he knows this can’t be real. 

“I see him, too,” Satoshi reassures him, though Kazu hasn’t spoken. That is all the encouragement Kazu needs, and he crosses the rest of the lobby at a dash.

But before Kazu can throw his arms around the other boy, Sho has his hands up, steps back warily, and Kazu halts in confusion. 

“Sho-chan, what—you’re here, how…?”

Sho hesitates, his brows furrow. “The Host,” he begins, but can’t seem to find the words. Instead, he holds out a hand for Kazu to take. Kazu does so, gripping it with both his own.

He stares down, sees Sho’s hand in his, the longer, knobby fingers under his own blunt digits. He can _see_ it, but…

“I can’t touch you,” Kazu whispers. Satoshi is beside him now, and glances at him, confused. He reaches out to pick up Sho’s other hand, then gives a little gasp. Like holding air, like holding nothing at all.

“Masaki doesn’t know,” Sho says, with a deep pain in his voice. “He’s still asleep, the transfer was too much, and he—I don’t know what to do.”

_Flash._

“It—it must have been the shock,” Kimura says faintly. “He should have started recovering, once the…transfer…” He trails off, just staring down at the hospital bed, at the still form lying in it.

Kazu can’t look away from Masaki’s face. He could be sleeping, really. He looks so much more peaceful now, the pain gone from his face, he almost looks like he did before. Kazu knows there are deep, racking sobs waiting in the pit of his stomach, he can feel them like a weight there, but he holds them in. Not here. Satoshi is crying freely, silent tears that roll endlessly down his cheeks.

Sho is standing across the room, by the window. He keeps pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes, hard, then pulling them away to stare at them. In a flash of insight, Kazu understands something—the Host body cannot cry.

Instead, Sho screams.

_Flash._

None of them are there when Masaki’s parents come to collect his body. They have already said their goodbyes.

Later, after the funeral, after everything is taken care of, Kazu comes home and sees a policeman on the stoop talking to his mother.

He turns and walks away before anyone can see him approaching.

_Flash._

“Run,” Sho says, pleading. “Just get out, before—”

“We won’t leave you here!” Kazu hisses. They shouldn’t even be here, but Sho can’t leave the clinic and risk someone seeing him. “I can Carry you this time, I bet I could figure out how that machine—”

“NO,” Sho almost yells. The anger that is wound up tight with his grief springs to the surface. “No more fucking transfers—no one else is going to die because I was too afraid to!”

Before Kazu can say anything else, there are sounds from upstairs—a door opening, footsteps moving along the hall towards the stairwell.

“Just get out of here,” Sho says again, herding them towards the door. “Get out of town, stay away until everything blows over. The agents, they’ll try and make you stay here, and I just don’t know—”

“We’ll come back for you,” Satoshi promises.

“Don’t,” Sho counters. “Just—I’m going to stay here, as long as it takes, until I can figure out what they do, how they do it. Until I can make sure we’re all together again. All five of us.”

Kazu’s brow knits in confusion. “But how—”

“Go!” Sho says, pushing them through the door. The footsteps are on the stairs now.

They run.

_Flash._

Years pass, and they live like shadows, learning to get what they need without leaving any traces. They work odd-jobs for cash, live out of an old car for a while, until it gets towed, then in a tent near a homeless village. Sometimes they send postcards to their families, just to let them know they’re okay, but they always have to move on quickly afterwards, just in case.

Belatedly, Kazu realizes that running just made them look more guilty, but he doesn’t really regret it. Even if he could have managed to keep his head through all the interrogations, to not give anything away, he knows everyone in town would go on thinking he and Satoshi had something to do with the strange deaths of their friends.

Even so, Kazu wants to go back. He knows Satoshi would go with him as soon as he said the word, but he’s afraid, too. Afraid of police waiting for him in his living room, of the agents finding them, of anything that will take away the last piece of his old life that he has to hold onto.

“Right here,” Satoshi whispers to him at night. “I’m right here with you.”

Eventually, enough time goes by that they feel safe returning—quietly, carefully. They visit the local graveyard, only long enough to leave small bundles of flowers by three of the grave-markers.

But when they go to find Sho, there is a flower shop where the clinic used to be.

“Kitagawa Clinic?” says the young shop-keeper. “Never heard of it. You boys not from around here?”

_Flash._


	8. Chapter 8

Nino drifts upwards toward consciousness slowly. He feels heavy, sluggish, like he’s made of clay, and it’s a struggle just to pump blood through his veins. With a groan, he realizes he has a splitting headache. He tries to move an arm up to shield his eyes—the room is brighter than it should be, painful—but his limbs won’t obey him, and he just twitches instead.

“—ino,” says Jun’s voice, nearby. “Nino, can you—”

 _Bam, bam, bam_ —someone at the door, Nino realizes belatedly, twitching again in an effort to protect his ears from the ungodly racket. Slowly, his other senses are starting to return to him, and he can feel Jun’s hand warm on his chest. Jun’s hand. Jun. 

The dream, the memories, suddenly catch up to him, the emotions still so strong and close to the surface, and it courses through him like an electric shock—they were all dead, Sho and Masaki and Jun. Jun was dead. Nino’s eyes flare open, he sees Jun staring back at him, a strange double-image: Jun as he was in the dream, young and fierce, and Jun as he is now, a little older, with a worry line etched between his brows over his dark-framed glasses. Nino jolts upright to capture him in a stranglehold. 

“Stupid,” Nino murmurs into his neck, still feeling the lurch in his gut from Masaki telling him Jun was gone. “You’re so stupid.”

“Nino?” Jun says faintly, sounding torn between concern and affront. After a moment, he winds his arms around Nino in return, hesitant at first and then tighter, until breathing becomes a little difficult. But Nino doesn’t care, because Jun is here and warm and alive and…wait. Wait. It was just a dream, wasn’t it?

 _A memory_ , Satoshi reminds him, strangely subdued. 

A memory? Of what? Because Nino knows none of the things he saw have ever happened to him. He never grew up with any of them—he didn’t know Jun till college, and he only met Aiba and Sakurai five days ago. And Satoshi…Satoshi has always just been in his head. But it had been so real, it still feels real, so much clearer than a dream, and not fading as he wakes.

 _Bam, bam, bam_. The door again, shaking Nino out of his reverie somewhat, and reminding him of his headache. 

“Should I…get that?” says a voice next to the couch.

Nino looks over Jun’s shoulder to see Aiba watching them with concern, and Nino has another disorienting moment, as his brain reacts in two different ways at once. A part of him sees Aiba, the stranger who he met on the street a week ago, and feels a burst of paranoia, thinking _what is he doing here?_ And another part sees Masaki, the boy he grew up with, healthy and whole, and wants to tackle him like he just did Jun. 

The result is something that sounds like “Wha-huh?” and a strangled yelp from Jun as Nino squeezes him even tighter.

“Uh,” Aiba says, blinking. “I’ll just—yeah.” He gestures vaguely over his shoulder before rising to go to the door.

“Are you okay?” Jun asks, pulling back to look Nino in the face. “You…fainted or something, and…” He stops here, pursing his lips for a moment. Then: “Aiba explained about…about Satoshi.”

Nino feels his breath catch—stupid, maybe, but an old fear, and one that dies hard. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Satoshi stirs, alert and listening. Nino doesn’t speak, just watches Jun, and waits. 

“You didn’t tell me because you were afraid I wouldn’t believe you,” Jun says finally.

A wry little smile curls Nino’s lips. “You _didn’t_ believe me.”

There’s another pause, while Jun chews his lower lip and searches Nino’s face.

“I’m sorry,” Jun says. 

The breath Nino was holding rushes out as relief floods through him, making his throat unexpectedly tight. Because this is the first time. The first time anyone has known about Satoshi without thinking Nino was insane. And while Jun might still be harboring doubts about Nino’s sanity, he looks so earnest, and so worried, that Nino wants to hug him again. 

But before he can, there’s the sound of the door opening, and Aiba saying “Sho-chan!” in shocked tones. Nino and Jun can hear their hushed conversation from the living room.

“Hello,” Sakurai says, sheepish.

“How did you—” Aiba stutters. “You traced the call!”

“I was worried about you,” Sakurai returns, “you just ran away without a phone or money or anything!”

“I’m not _five_ , I can survive for a few hours without my wallet.” 

There’s the sound of the door closing and Sakurai shuffling in—apparently Aiba isn’t angry enough to leave Sho standing out in the cold.

“You were…distraught,” Sakurai says delicately. Then again, softer: “I was worried about you.”

Nino and Jun exchange a glance in the silence that follows this statement, but then Aiba is hurrying back to the living room, with Sakurai close behind him.

And for a third time, Nino is struck by the bizarre double-vision his dream left him with. Except that this time, the images are the same. Sho as he was, and Sakurai as he is—exactly the same. If what he saw was a dream, that makes more sense than anything, really, but Nino gets the feeling there’s more to it than that.

Sakurai, however, is staring at Jun with a happy, bemused little smile. Jun returns his gaze with a much more skeptical expression, drops his hands from around Nino’s waist a little embarrassedly, then stands and crosses his arms.

“So you’re Aiba-san’s partner?” Jun asks, with the air of someone trying to regain their grip on reality. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“Yes, I’m Sakurai Sho,” Sakurai introduces himself, giving a brief bow. “I’m sorry to intrude, but I was concerned about Aiba-kun and…” He glances at Nino, still mostly prone on the couch. “Is everything…alright?”

There is an awkward pause—Jun doesn’t seem sure how to answer the question, Aiba is staring determinedly at his feet—and Nino makes a decision.

“I’ll catch you up,” he says, swinging his legs over the side of the couch. “After Aiba showed up, I fainted and had a dream about how we all grew up together, and how all of you—” and he points to each of his companions, “—died. Satoshi is under the impression that it wasn’t a dream. It was a memory.”

Aiba’s head has snapped up at Nino’s words, and Jun is watching him with wide eyes. Sakurai’s face is carefully blank, but for the little crease between his brows. Nino continues, looking straight at Sakurai.

“I don’t know how it is that I can have memories of a life I never lived. But you do. Don’t you?”

Sakurai’s mouth compresses into a tight line for a moment, then he turns to Aiba.

“How did this happen?” he asks softly.

Aiba tears his eyes away from Nino to look at his partner in confusion. “Well, I—I don’t—I didn’t know he was remembering things, I just touched him for a second…”

“You did this?” Jun says accusingly.

“Not on purpose!” Aiba protests. “You’re the one who pushed him!”

“I didn’t touch him!”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Sakurai interrupts. “Ninomiya-kun, do you remember what happened before you fainted?”

“Not especially,” Nino says with a shrug. “But it wasn’t me, when it happened. It was Satoshi.”

“ _What?_ ” the rest of the room choruses.

“But if it was—” Aiba begins.

“Then, when you…” Jun murmurs.

“Why was Satoshi—?” Sakurai starts, but Nino stands abruptly, cutting everyone short.

“I need a drink,” he says. “When I come back,” and he points to Sakurai, “you’re going to start answering questions.”

And with that, he turns and leaves the room.

Once he’s in the kitchen and away from the crowd in the living room, Nino breathes out a slow breath, then opens a cupboard to get himself a glass for water, though the drink is not, in fact, what he escaped to the kitchen for. As he holds his cup under the tap and lets it fill, he reaches back into his mind, farther than usual, before he finds Satoshi.

_Satoshi?_

There’s no answer, just a roiling sense of unhappiness.

_What’s wrong?_

Satoshi seems to cringe away from him. _I shouldn’t be here. I’m hurting you._

Flashes of the dream—the memory—of Masaki wasting away under the burden of a second soul, and Nino just shakes his head a little.

 _I’m fine. You’ve always been with me. And I’m fine._ And somehow, Nino knows this is true. The only time sharing a body with Satoshi has ever been painful was when Nino tried to make him go away.

_But—_

_I don’t_ want _you gone. Stay with me, Satoshi. Remember?_

There’s a pause, and Nino can feel Satoshi thinking, remembering.

 _Always_ , Satoshi replies faintly, with images of desperation and tangled limbs. And then suddenly his presence rushes forward, filling Nino’s awareness without pushing him away. He can feel Satoshi in every part of his mind, every inch of his body, and he grips the edge of the sink till his knuckles go white, shuddering with the sensory overload.

 _It doesn’t hurt?_ Satoshi demands. _Like this?_

 _No_ , Nino reassures him, though he’s having trouble keeping his knees from buckling. _You know it doesn’t, but—I can’t—_

Satoshi retreats, just a little, just enough for Nino to regain his equilibrium, and he turns the water off as his cup is threatening to overflow. 

_I don’t understand, Satoshi says. I don’t understand any of this._

Nino feels the fear and uncertainty in Satoshi’s words, and wants more than anything to comfort him. The memories of touch, of warmth and skin, are still strong, but all Nino can do is raise a hand to his face—that old, familiar gesture—and kiss the palm softly.

 _We’re going to get answers_ , Nino promises him. _Now. Tonight._

But before he can make good on this declaration, someone else joins them in the kitchen. Nino turns to find Jun watching him hesitantly.

“Nino?” he asks, uncertain, coming closer but keeping a wary distance.

“Hey,” Nino replies, taking a long gulp of his water, giving himself a little time to recover. When he lowers his glass again, Jun is still watching him, arms crossed and brow furrowed.

“Before,” Jun says finally. “About before…that was Satoshi?”

The name still comes a little awkwardly off of Jun’s tongue, and Nino just nods, unsure of where this is going. Out in the living room, Nino can hear the low murmur of voices, and Jun doesn’t speak right away.

“Aiba-san said that you—you and Satoshi—have known each other your whole lives. You’ve always been like this?”

Nino nods again. He feels Satoshi, focused and fearful.

“He also said that, if two souls share a body, it can…be harmful. Deteriorate.”

“I’m not,” Nino says quickly. “I mean—I don’t know why, but…I’m fine. Really.”

Jun thinks about this for a moment, then nods slowly. He uncrosses his arms and steps a little closer.

“He also said that you…you love each other?”

Nino’s brow furrows a bit as he nods—it seems like such an odd, obvious question. How could you not love someone you’re sharing a body with? He’s always loved Satoshi, always known. But there’s something troubled in Jun’s eyes as he watches Nino.

 _Oh_ , Satoshi says, sounding a little dazed, _I think he loves you._

And then Nino sees it, too. _Oh. Damn._

But Jun does not launch into any dramatic confessions, he just leans back wearily against the counter, pushing his glasses up onto his head to scrub at his face.

“Sorry,” he says with a sigh, and it takes Nino a moment to realize he’s not apologizing for being in love. “This is a lot to take in all at once. I mean, I understand that it’s very…important, to you, but…”

There’s a pause, then Jun looks over with a pained expression.

“I have a ten page paper due tomorrow.” 

Nino blinks, and then before he really realizes what he’s doing, bursts into laughter. Verging on hysterical, maybe, but he can’t help it. The fall from all the drama—the secret agents, possible past-life regressions, random fainting spells—back into the reality of everyday life, of Jun being in college with papers due, and Nino suddenly remembering he has work to go to tomorrow morning, makes him feel dizzy and relieved and oddly light-headed. 

He stumbles a little in his mirth, into Jun’s chest, and lets his giggles fade out into Jun’s neck. After a moment, Jun puts his arms around Nino’s shoulders, rests his cheek against the top of Nino’s head. Where they’re pressed together, Nino feels Jun’s little sigh, and it sobers him a bit.

“How much did Aiba tell you, anyway?” Nino asks, letting himself lean on Jun a little longer, because despite how many times they’ve slept together, Jun really isn’t all that physically affectionate. Nino savors it.

“Not much, actually,” Jun answers with another sigh. “Apparently he works for a secret agency that experiments on babies.”

“What?”

“I don’t know, it wasn’t a very organized discussion. Anyway,” Jun shifts, and Nino takes the cue to step back, “he also said he’s a…Decoder, I think? He can make people remember their past lives, or…?”

Jun looks to Nino, waiting—for confirmation, denial—but Nino is just thoughtfully silent, finishing off his glass of water. When Nino doesn’t reply, Jun answers his own unspoken question.

“I think he might be telling the truth.”

Nino’s eyebrows go up in surprise. “Oh?”

Jun seems a bit embarrassed to be admitting to something so outrageous, and doesn’t meet Nino’s eyes as he continues.

“It’s just that…well, before, with Aiba, something weird happened when—whenever I touched him, I kind of…saw…things.”

Nino can’t help a little smirk. “Descriptive.”

“Well,” Jun huffs. “It was—I mean, it’s hard to explain. It was just…flashes. And you said you had that dream…”

Flashes. Yes, Nino thinks, that sounds about right. And if Jun is willing to suspend his disbelief at least this much, Nino decides he might as well just dive in.

“I think he might be telling the truth, too,” Nino agrees. “There’s definitely something weird going on here, anyway. I don’t know if it’s really past lives, or maybe a secret government mind-control project or something, but I’m going to find out as much as I can. I need to.”

Nino doesn’t say _I need to see Satoshi again, I need to touch him_ , but the sentiment is there, and his sense of Satoshi is suddenly stronger, warmer, and he feels a tingle on his palm.

“So,” Jun asks after a moment. “What exactly did you…see? In the dream?”

Nino debates about whether or not to answer this question for a moment, but eventually shrugs and starts to explain.

“Well,” Nino begins, “it was all of us, Satoshi too. We grew up together.”

Briefly, Nino recounts what he witnessed in the dream. It is an abbreviated version, but still rather long, and Jun listens quietly, working very hard to mask his incredulity. 

“And I don’t know what happened after that,” Nino finishes. “I guess me and Satoshi grew old and died eventually, but…”

“And Satoshi thinks this is a memory?” Jun asks after a pause.

 _I_ know _it is_ , Satoshi says, and Nino relays this information.

Jun blinks at that, still unused to the idea that he’s talking to two people. “Well, but…how does he know?”

“He ‘just knows’, apparently,” Nino says with a shrug. “Not very helpful, I know, but I think we can find out for sure.”

“How?”

“Well,” Nino says slowly. “If all of this really happened…And if Sho—if Sakurai didn’t really ever die…he would know this story already, right?”

Jun still looks a little confused. “So then…?”

“So, then, if he can, you know, confirm all of it without me telling him anything beforehand, that’ll mean it’s true, won’t it?”

“I guess so,” Jun agrees eventually. He sighs again. “Or maybe this is all a bizarre dream that _I’m_ having right now.”

“In that case, you have a much more active imagination than I’d given you credit for,” Nino smirks, motioning for Jun to precede him back out to the living room.

Sakurai and Aiba are still standing, carrying on a rapid whispered conversation which cuts off as soon as they notice Nino and Jun returning from the kitchen.

“Why don’t we all sit down?” Nino suggests, gesturing for Aiba and Sakurai to take the couch, and pulling a chair over from the dining room for himself. Jun settles into the arm chair with all of his limbs crossed tight.

But Sakurai remains standing, mouth twisting indecisively.

“I appreciate your hospitality,” he says, and Nino rolls his eyes, “but something has come up—the situation at the agency has become a bit more urgent, and if…well, I realize you will most likely be averse to the idea, but if you and Satoshi and Ju—Matsumoto-san would come back with—”

“Let’s cut the crap,” Nino interrupts, pulling his legs up to sit Indian-style in his chair. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what this is really all about.”

“But—”

“No,” Nino says. “Enough. I need you to tell me if this dream was real. And if…what happened…really happened, you should be able to.”

Nino is being purposefully vague, but he can’t give away too much if this is going to work. Sakurai still looks torn. He tries for a compromise.

“It _was_ real,” he says. “I promise you, everything that you saw did happen—to all of you—in your last life, but there’s no time to—”

“Prove it,” Nino says stubbornly. “Tell me what happened.”

“I…I don’t know if that’s—”

“Please.” And Nino tries one last ploy. “Sho-chan?”

Sakurai’s eyes widen a little, and his face is a mess of emotions, too many for Nino to make out. Then, Sakurai sinks down onto the couch and drops his head into his hands.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he says, almost to himself. “I was going to fix everything, so that you could all just have normal, happy lives, not like last time, I…”

“Please, Sho-chan.”

And Sakurai looks up, because this time it’s Aiba making the request. Aiba is sitting up straight, looking calmer than he has since Sakurai arrived, and meeting the other man’s eyes steadily.

“I want to know, too,” Aiba continues. “I was afraid of it before, but I think…I need to know. Right?”

Their gazes lock for long moments, Jun looks on uncomfortably, and a not so dissimilar scene floats in the back of Nino’s mind. Finally, Sakurai nods, and looks back down at his hands in his lap.

“Yes,” he says softly. “Maybe you all need to know.”

Then, with another sigh, he begins.

Sakurai—although Nino can’t help thinking of him as “Sho” now—speaks haltingly, hesitantly, and Nino gets the feeling this is something he has never told anyone, something he has kept secret and hidden for a long time. His story is almost identical to what Nino saw in his dream, with a few exceptions that are only a matter of point-of-view. It starts with Sho getting sick, and then all of them going to the clinic. There’s the soul transfer, Aiba volunteering to be the carrier, how close it came to not working.

When the story moves on to how Aiba began to grow weaker, Nino looks up to see Jun watching the pair on the couch with intense concentration. Jun doesn’t react outwardly to the part where he dies trying to save Aiba, except to shift his hands to his lap, rubbing distractedly at his wrist.

Sho stutters, and falls briefly silent after recounting Aiba’s death. Aiba, meanwhile, has slouched down in his seat, with one hand over his eyes that does nothing to hide the tears that slip out from beneath it.

“—then I told you and Satoshi to run,” Sho says as he finally comes to the end. “And that was the last time I saw you. Until five days ago.”

“The clinic was gone when we went back,” Nino says softly. “Like it had never even been there.”

“It…moves around,” Sho explains. “I didn’t know that, then.”

Sho turns to Aiba, who has stopped crying but is still covering his face. “Masaki…”

Aiba sits up quickly, swiping at his face. “I’m—it’s…I remember, now. I remember.”

An awkward silence settles over the room, as no one seems to know where to go from here. Eventually it is Jun who stands and breaks the tension.

“I’m sorry,” he says, just a touch of impatience in his voice, “but the rest of this is going to have to wait until tomorrow. I have homework to finish.”

Everyone stares at him for a moment, and then Sho starts to laugh—although his amusement is much less hysterical than Nino’s was. It ends with a heavy sigh and Sho collapsing back against the couch and scrubbing his hands over his face.

“Yes, I suppose it can wait at least a day.”

Nino would rather like to disagree, and he sees Aiba’s brow furrow. “But what about the agency? Shouldn’t we…?”

“They gave me three days,” Sho tells him, then gives a wry smile. “I’m actually doing much better than anticipated.”

“Well, then,” Jun says pointedly, “if you’ll excuse me.”

He bows slightly towards Aiba and Sho, then walks to his bedroom and shuts the door. Nino imagines him leaning against it from the other side, perhaps a little relieved to return to his management textbooks.

“We should be going as well,” Sho says, standing. Aiba moves to follow him, and then looks down at himself with a little jump of surprise.

“My clothes!”

“I was wondering what you were doing in Jun’s tracksuit,” Nino says, following Aiba’s gaze to the pile of clothes on the floor behind the couch. He rises and gathers them up, batting away Aiba’s efforts to help him.

“Why don’t you both just stay here?” Nino suggests. “It’s late, and by the time these finish drying…”

“Oh!” Aiba perks up at the idea. He turns to Sho. “Do you think we could?”

Sho seems to be seriously entertaining the thought, but shakes his head. “I don’t really think—”

“I’ve got a spare futon,” Nino reassures him. “And the other person can sleep on the couch.”

“Oh,” Sho stammers, “that’s not—I mean—I don’t…I don’t sleep. Actually.”

There’s a pause, and Aiba says “You don’t?” in a very small voice, at the same time as Nino gives a startled “What?” Sho looks a bit pained, nodding sheepishly.

“The Host body,” he explains. “It’s not a body at all, really, so I don’t—you know, I don’t get tired or hungry or…yeah.”

The silence that follows is heavy and awkward, and Nino hates how sad Sho and Aiba both look all of a sudden.

“Well, one less thing to worry about,” Nino says with determined cheerfulness. “Anyway, just stay here for the night. I’ll get these clothes started.”

With Aiba’s clothes being held hostage, the pair really has no choice but to obey, and as he leaves the room, Nino sees them resume their seats on the couch. After everything, it’s a little bizarre to go through the mundane motions of pouring detergent and adjusting the settings on the washing machine, but Nino finds it soothing somehow. Afterwards, he drags out the spare futon despite Sho’s protests, then excuses himself to his own room. 

Once the door is closed, he feels Satoshi all around him, not as intense as before, but just as enveloping and immediate.

“I guess we didn’t find out that much after all,” Nino says ruefully, kicking dirty socks and game controllers out of his way. Though he’s been in the same clothes all day, he’s already slept in them once, so he figures he might as well do it again.

 _I told you it was real_ , Satoshi says, sounding a little smug.

 _You don’t know_ , Nino replies. _Maybe he planted subconscious suggestions in our head when he used that machine._

_You believe him, though._

Nino sighs, nods. There is deep contentment radiating from Satoshi, so strong it even makes Nino a little giddy. _What are you so happy about, anyway?_

 _I know what I want now, Kazu_ , Satoshi says as they fall into the bed. 

Nino rolls onto his back. _Yeah?_

_To be beside you. Like before. To be where I can touch you, and see you._

Nino finds his hands moving of their own accord, over his arms and stomach and chest, and this is something new again, as he feels what Satoshi feels—his body, his fingers on his skin where Satoshi is touching Nino touching Satoshi, all together, overlapping and confused and wonderful.

 _You_ can _see me. And touch me. Like this._

Satoshi chuckles, and Nino feels it all through his veins. _It’ll be better._

 _Better than this?_ Nino asks, with a little more desperation than he means to.

 _Much better_ , Satoshi promises, moving Nino’s hands down, slow and delicate in a way that Nino has never touched himself. His fingers ghost over his hipbones, jeans riding low, down his thighs, his back already arching in anticipation.

They move together slowly, quietly, aware that they are not alone in the house. Nino’s fingertips tingle with Satoshi’s presence, his skin burns and comes up in goose-bumps where ever they pass. After a time, he is panting, soft and low. His shirt ends up bunched under his armpits, and his pants find their way to the floor. Nino knows it is his own hand between his legs, but it feels like Satoshi, and he remembers what Satoshi’s hands looked like: long, delicate fingers, and the dark relief of veins on the backs. He can imagine them now, touching him with tender surety, bringing him closer and closer till he is there, at the edge, trembling with the need to just let himself fall.

And they don’t speak, don’t form coherent thoughts, because they don’t have to. Any walls that had been left up between them come tumbling down now, Satoshi is not holding anything back, doesn’t even try, and Nino was never good at holding back in the first place. 

Everything gets jumbled up together, touches and heartbeats and memories, all their memories, new and old—alone on the playground because no one wants to play with the boy who talks to himself, alone in his head because the doctors told him there wasn’t really anyone else there—meeting Satoshi on the dusty riverbank and helping him pull in a net-full of fish, hiding in Masaki’s closet because they were both in big trouble for shaving the dog—the first time he kissed Jun and felt like maybe it would be alright, to be close to someone, and dropping out of college and feeling better instead of guilty—Sho’s first really bad coughing fit and how terrifying it was, how much worse when they told him it wasn’t going to get better—that night only five days ago, with Jun, and Satoshi, when things started to change, and right now when all of it is spiraling towards something bigger, something important.

Nino’s blood is pounding through him, racing, and words attach themselves to the beat, just snippets that catch on the rushing flow.

 _Satoshi—Satoshi_ —goes his heart— _stay—stay—stay—stay._

 _Always_ , and Satoshi’s words follow the same thudding rhythm. _Right here. With you. Always._

Nino gasps into his pillow, comes, comes undone.


	9. Chapter 9

Aiba knows he should sleep, he’s tired, but instead he lies awake in the spare futon Nino laid out for him. He studies the pattern of light on the ceiling—jagged white coming from around the curtain in front of the balcony, and gently fanning orange from the crack above Jun’s door—and he listens to the soft sound of Sho, on the couch, breathing in and out. Aiba wonders how it is that Sho can make that sound when he isn’t really breathing, in his body that isn’t really a body.

Aiba shifts, trying to get comfortable, willing his brain to shut off. But it’s impossible; his mind is still reeling with everything that has happened in the last twelve hours. He had thought he was used to remembering things, things that were part of a different lifetime, but these memories are sharper than any he’s experienced before—and more painful for their sharpness. He knows, somehow, that it’s important, the fact that they have all managed to come together again like this, but there is still so much he doesn’t understand, that doesn’t make sense.

“How long,” Aiba says suddenly into the darkness, and he hears Sho jump, startled. “How long,” he says again, “have you been waiting for us?”

Sho doesn’t answer at first, and Aiba hears him shifting around—and wonders again, how is that possible, how does it work—before he finally speaks.

“I don’t really know,” Sho says. “I stopped counting after a while. Maybe…fifty…”

“Years?!” Aiba whispers sharply, propping himself up on one elbow and eyeing the shadowy outline of Sho on the sofa. “How—what have you even been doing all this time?”

“Well, I—” Sho cuts himself off, sounding guilty and uncomfortable. “Maybe I should wait and tell everyone in the morning, together…”

“But,” Aiba protests. “I just—I don’t understand. How you found us all again, or the ASD, what it is and why the agents are helping you, and—what did they tell you, anyway? Why did you start working for them?”

Sho shifts around some more, and Aiba can just see him in the low light: he rolls to his side, facing Aiba, with his hands tucked under his cheek like a little kid. “They don’t tell me much, actually,” Sho admits after a while. “But they told me they’d help me find you, all of you. That it was their job.”

“But who _are_ they, really?” Aiba asks before Sho can explain any further.

“I don’t know,” Sho says again, almost embarrassed. “I mean, I just know their names, I know they run the ASD. I don’t think they’re human, or at least not anymore if they were once. They haven’t aged, and they don’t come down from the Third Floor anymore, ever since…well, since they found us, that first time. These things we can do,” and Sho gestures to himself and Aiba, “Encoding and Decoding, and Kazu and Satoshi, sharing a body without any damage to either of them—it’s not normal, you know? The agents said it was their job to find people like us, and help us. And that if I helped them, they’d help me.”

A hundred more questions burst to life in Aiba’s head, clamoring for attention, but he settles for: “What about Jun?”

“What?”

“He can’t do anything, can he? Why would they want him, too?”

“Well,” Sho says, “Kimura told me that they suspect Jun is a ‘Shifter’, although he wouldn’t tell me what a Shifter is. Just that it’s a ‘dangerous condition’ and they want to help him.”

Aiba thinks about that quietly for a moment, laying down and mirroring Sho’s pose. For five years he’s worked for the ASD, and he’s never really cared before what the senior agents do or why they do it—it had never seemed important, and he had had plenty of interesting things to keep him busy with the assignments he was given—but suddenly it seems sinister, troubling.

“Then…are we really going to give Satoshi a body?” he asks. “Or is this assignment just—?”

“No,” Sho says quickly. “We will. They promised.”

“And,” Aiba continues. “What about you?”

Sho falls quiet, even the sound of his breaths stopping for a moment. “There’s only one Vessel—one body. For Satoshi.”

Aiba squeezes his eyes shut in counterpoint to the sudden squeeze in his chest. It’s selfish, but for a few frantic seconds he imagines pleading with Ninomiya to keep Satoshi with him, to let Aiba have the Vessel, for Sho, because at least Ninomiya can still be with Satoshi, can _feel_ him, but maybe Aiba will never be able to touch Sho again. The moment passes, and Aiba lets out a shaky exhale.

“Sho-chan,” Aiba says after a pause. “What were you planning to do, after this assignment is over? After Satoshi has a body again?”

“I,” Sho begins, but that’s as far as he gets before falling quiet again. The silence lasts a long time, long enough that Aiba knows his suspicions are probably correct: while Aiba’s Decoding can unlock memories that people are not meant to remember, Sho’s Encoding can change memories, or lock them up like they were never there.

“You were going to Code us, weren’t you?” Aiba asks. “So we would forget you.” 

But before Sho can explain himself, they are interrupted by a strident ringing. When Sho jumps and digs madly in his pocket, Aiba realizes it must be the sound of the other man’s cellphone.

“Yes?” Sho says when he finally answers. After a moment, he sits straight up on the couch. “Yes, sir, I—” Another pause. “Now? I—all right, but—yes, I’m coming now.”

And then he stands and begins walking to the door. 

“Sho-chan, where are you going?” Aiba says, sitting up as well, but Sho is already gone around the corner. As Aiba gets up to follow him, Jun’s door opens, flooding the dark living room with yellow light.

“Is everything okay out here?” Jun ventures, with a look like even asking is against his better judgment.

“I don’t know,” Aiba says, untangling himself from his sheets. “Sho got a phone call and then all of a sudden—”

“Sir,” comes Sho’s voice, and the sound of the front door opening. “Er—sirs. Why—?”

“We’ll be taking over from here.” This is Kusanagi’s voice, and Aiba rounds the corner just in time to see the senior agent grab Sho by the back of the neck and—

And kiss him.

Aiba makes a strangled noise of shock and confusion, and stops so suddenly that Jun slams into him from behind. Before Aiba can even process what he just saw, Sho’s body goes limp, drops, but when it hits the floor, it is no longer Sho—just a lifeless, doll-faced shape in Sho’s clothes.

There is a pause, while Aiba looks from the empty Host to Kusanagi, who just smiles a little sadly. It is only now that Aiba notices the other four agents standing behind him.

“I’m afraid it had to be done,” Kusanagi says. “Unfortunately, Sakurai-kun will be resigning from his post.”

“NO!” Aiba shouts, makes to lunge forward, but Jun is already tugging him backwards, both arms wrapped around Aiba’s chest. The other agents are following Kusanagi through the door, but Aiba can only stare at the crumpled figure at their feet, struggling against Jun’s hold on him. 

But Jun has apparently decided that whoever these people are, they are a threat, and he drags Aiba away from them and backwards through the living room, maybe towards the fire escape outside the balcony door. Aiba is still calling and calling to Sho, though it is clear the other man can no longer hear him.

That’s when Nino opens his door, rubbing his face and looking irritable. “What the hell are you all—”

But then he sees the agents, and Jun wrestling with Aiba, and after a split second of indecision, slams his door shut again. However, when he does, Kimura steps forward. He gazes at Nino’s door almost curiously, tilting his head a little to the side, and it slams open again with so much force that the knob lodges in the drywall and it does not bounce back. Nino stumbles through the opening—apparently he had still had his hand on the knob—and freezes, uncertain.

“Nino, get over here!” Jun says, one hand already on the sliding glass door. When Nino starts to dash towards him, Kimura speaks again.

“Stop,” he says calmly.

And they do.

Aiba stops struggling, but only because the air all around him feels suddenly solid, trapping him in place with Jun still behind him. Nino freezes in mid-stride, but his eyes are moving frantically from Aiba and Jun to the agents, now gathered in the living room. Kimura grins, looking pleased with himself, but then Aiba feels movement at his back.

Jun tenses, shaking with the effort, and then chokes out a “Let go!”

And they are loose again, all of them staggering a bit with the unexpected freedom of movement. Kimura’s eyes widen, but after a moment of shock, he says, sternly: “No.”

They are stopped again, and Kimura takes a step closer, eyeing Jun critically.

“Well done, little lost soul,” he murmurs. “I suppose you do have potential after all.”

Aiba stares at the agents and can’t even struggle, and Jun is motionless behind him again, apparently having exhausted whatever momentary power he had over the situation. Aiba doesn’t understand this, how this is happening, what the agents are doing here, but his panicking mind keeps going back to Sho, Sho, gone again and lying still on the floor.

Nakai steps up next to Kimura, and the two men exchange a glance. 

“So how do we get them back?” Kimura asks.

“Nothing for it, I guess,” Nakai says. Kimura gives a little shrug, and Nakai sighs and rolls his eyes.

“Sleep,” he says.

And they do.

*

When Nino wakes, he feels stiff, lightheaded. He had been having the strangest dream, that the agents had shown up at his house, done some weird magic to freeze the air, and then…he doesn’t remember. The urgency of the dream, the need to run, is still with him as he comes back to consciousness.

He tries to sit up, and is then suddenly wide awake when he realizes: he is already sitting up, and he is tied to whatever he is sitting to. He jerks in an instinctive move to escape, then jerks again when he finds himself sitting in a chair next to the Reader facing a lifeless Host body. Not a dream, then.

“The fuck—” he growls, struggling violently enough to make the chair knock against the floor. The rest of his surroundings finally come into focus, but it is not the same little room where he last encountered the Reader. It looks almost like an interrogation room, brightly lit with a long mirror across one wall and only one door.

 _Satoshi, what’s happening?_ Nino calls frantically, his eyes never leaving the Host. _Don’t go, whatever they do, don’t go—_

 _Kazu._ Satoshi is there, close, the feel of him laced with panic and confusion. _Kazu, I don’t know what’s going on, why are we here? Kazu—_

Nino tries to breathe, to regain some semblance of calm, because he needs to think, they need to get out. How had he gone from getting his memories back to this? He’s sure the two events are connected somehow. What is this, anyway? Kidnap? Abduction? For some reason he can’t quite recall, he knows the agents want them here, want them all here. Then where are the others?

His train of thought is interrupted when the door bursts open to admit Kimura, followed closely by the young man Nino had seen briefly during his first visit to the clinic, whatever his name was.

“Oh, you’re awake,” Kimura says with a kind of manic cheer. “Good morning.”

“Sir,” the young man says, and Nino suddenly and inexplicably remembers that his name is Ikuta. “I really don’t think using this much force—”

“And I really don’t care what you think,” Kimura says. He walks around to the far side of the Reader and places the Host’s limp hand on the glowing blue ring.

“Takuya,” and this is Katori, suddenly in the doorway and out of breath, “we need you to come back and help with Matsumoto, he’s getting a handle on this Shifting thing a lot faster than we expected.”

From somewhere outside of the room, Nino thinks he can hear a distant scuffle, and the sound of Jun calling his name. Katori dashes back down the hall. Satoshi’s presence beats around in Nino’s chest like a caught butterfly, desperate to be away from here, from the blank eyes of the Host body.

“God damn it,” Kimura sighs, enunciating carefully. He pauses for a minute, seeming to collect himself, then marches out of the room. “You,” he says to Ikuta as he goes, “finishing prepping the machine.”

After Kimura has left and Ikuta is standing uncertainly in front of the Reader’s keypad, Nino sees just one slim chance and finally speaks.

“Ikuta-kun,” Nino whispers to him, still testing the cords holding him to the chair. “Don’t do this. You don’t want to do this, right?”

Ikuta sighs, and when he looks up at Nino, his expression is not so much conflicted as annoyed. “No, I don’t, really. This isn’t proper procedure at all.”

Nino blinks, baffled, but tries again. “Well, can you untie me?”

“I don’t think that’s going to solve anything,” Ikuta says, shaking his head, and Nino gapes at him.

“Wha—yes it will! Just get me out of here, and—”

“And what? Kusanagi is still Carrying Sakurai, and all that business they fed him about a ‘Vessel’ for Satoshi was just bullshit to get him to bring the rest of you here—”

“What are you talking about?” Nino demands, frustration loud in his voice. “Are you going to help me or not?”

The commotion in the hallway grows in volume, and with a sound like a gunshot a long, jagged crack appears in the mirror on the wall.

“What the hell is going on?” Nino says, thrashing against his bonds now. “Just help me, please!”

Ikuta’s head whips towards Nino at that, and his eyes light up. “Say that again.”

“Help me!” Nino yells at him.

Ikuta smiles like Nino has just solved all his problems, but instead of coming and untying Nino, he turns away, to the wall and an ancient rotary wall-phone that Nino doesn’t remember being there a minute ago. As Ikuta picks it up and begins to dial, Jun bursts through the still open door.

“Nino!” he says, but before he can cross the room, someone outside shouts “Down!” and Jun hits the floor like a giant hand is pressing him into the linoleum. Kimura strides in a moment later and puts a foot in the middle of Jun’s back for good measure.

“And stay down,” he adds, almost like a command. “Is the Reader—?” Kimura begins, but then he looks up and sees Ikuta with the phone in his hand. “What are you doing?”

Ikuta ignores him, speaking into the phone. “Sir? Yes, I know you don’t like to be disturbed, but we have something of a situation down here.”

“Who are you talking to?” Kimura demands, reluctant to leave Jun, but obviously unhappy about what’s going on across the room.

“Yes,” Ikuta says, continuing his conversation. “I received a request for assistance, but things have gone somewhat beyond my—now, sir? All of them? I’ll send them up.”

“You’re working for _him_!” Kimura says as Ikuta hangs up. He crosses the room and continues to shout things at the other man—something about how he should have known, he could have used him all along, and Ikuta raises his hands and responds in a calming tone—but Nino doesn’t have any idea what they’re talking about, and isn’t listening anyway, he’s watching Jun.

Jun is still pressed to the floor, but his teeth are clenched and Nino thinks he can hear him muttering something, which he finally makes out over all the other noise.

“Get up,” Jun is saying. “Get—up.”

And then he bursts to his feet and Nino can feel the movement from all the way across the room, like a blast of wind. It rips away the cords holding him to the chair like they are made of crepe paper, and the crack in the mirror snaps into a longer spider-legged gash. This gets Kimura’s attention, and as he turns, the glass gives a high-pitched shriek. Nino dives out of the chair and away from the mirrored wall, but it’s too late: the glass is exploding outward to shower the room with razor shards.

But somehow, in the middle of it all, Nino clearly hears Ikuta say: “Time to go.”

And they do.


	10. Chapter 10

Nino doesn’t remember closing his eyes, but when he opens them again, he finds himself in another place altogether. The stark white room with its shattering glass is gone, replaced by what looks like the waiting room of an upscale business office: lots of leather furniture with silvery chrome on the armrests, glass coffee tables and a tasteful abstract painting on the wall. Nino is standing in front of the couch with Jun next to him, facing Sho and Aiba across the coffee table.

“Huh?” is the first thing he thinks to say. He feels Satoshi moving through him, filling his chest, his throat, pushing into his limbs and all the way down to his fingers as if to make sure everything is still intact. 

_Safe,_ Satoshi says, sounding much calmer than Nino thinks he should. _With you._

“Now where are we?” Jun asks. He sounds jumpy, irritated, and he reaches over to grab Nino’s arm, probably so as not to lose him again.

At the same time, Aiba looks over at Sho, then does a little double take.

“You’re alive!” Aiba says and grabs for the other man’s hand. Apparently the result is not what he was hoping for, and his expression falls.

“Oh,” he says. For a moment he looks heartbroken, but then a smile makes its way determinedly onto his face. “Well, you’re here, anyway.”

“I am,” Sho says, sounding surprised.

“Huh?” Nino says again.

“Well?” Jun interrupts, but receives only blank stares. “Do you know where we are?”

“Oh, right.” Sho glances around. “No, I don’t think—” but then his gaze lands on the door to his right. There is a little silver plaque across it that just says “President”, and Sho’s eyes go very wide. It is at about this moment that Nino registers voices coming from the other side of the door, which is not quite shut all the way.

“—don’t see what the problem is, we didn’t go against our contracts, and—”

At the sound of Kimura’s voice, Nino feels his panic come back to him full force, and Jun is already pulling him across the room.

“Wait!” Aiba hisses. He points towards the open door. “Don’t you want to listen?”

“Don’t you want to leave?” Jun counters.

“Well, there doesn’t seem to be a way out,” Aiba argues, and it is only now that Nino realizes there are no other doors or windows in the room.

Jun blinks at that, then turns towards the empty wall and stares at it, hard.

“Open,” he says authoritatively.

Nino would think Jun has completely lost it except that, for a brief second, a door flickers to life in the wall. It is only there long enough to be recognizable before it vanishes again.

“How are you doing that?” Nino demands, as Jun surges forward to check the wall, patting at it where the door knob had been, but to no avail.

“He’s Shifting,” says a new voice, and they all whip around to find Ikuta stepping from the office and shutting the door behind him. “Although he won’t be able to accomplish much in here, I’m afraid.”

“Toma!” Sho says, looking relieved to see a familiar face. “What are you doing here? What’s going on? Why are we in Johnny’s office?”

“Johnny?” Nino mouths at Jun, who just shrugs. It is some consolation that Aiba looks equally perplexed.

“He needs to speak with you,” Ikuta says. “Once he’s finished with the agents. He’ll explain everything,” he continues, when Sho opens his mouth for another question.

Suddenly, the volume of the conversation in the next room rises, Kimura again.

“They can replace us!” he is saying. “You don’t need to keep us here anymore!”

“That is enough,” says another voice, a deeper one that Nino doesn’t recognize. “At the very least it is clear that the five of you are no longer suitable for these positions. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with you, but for the time being, get out of my office.”

“But—”

“Now!”

Nino waits for the agents to emerge from the office, but instead there is silence. After a moment, the deep voice calls: “All right, send them in.”

Ikuta opens the door and motions them inside. Sho walks in immediately, followed by Aiba after only a brief hesitation, but Nino and Jun do not move.

“Why the hell should I go in there?” Nino says indignantly when Ikuta gives him a questioning look. “You people broke into my apartment and abducted me and my roommate, and that’s just things from the last twenty four hours that are counting against you.”

Ikuta sighs, but does not look especially surprised by Nino’s reluctance. But instead of trying to cajole him into coming, he just says: “Satoshi-kun, would you convince him please?”

Nino stares at Ikuta as he disappears through the office door, and then feels Satoshi—still there and filling every part of him—give him a little push.

_It’s safe here, Kazu. They can’t take me now unless I chose it._

_How do you know that?_ Nino demands. _How can you know that?_

 _I don’t know how I know,_ Satoshi returns, serene. _Trust me._

Nino glances over to find Jun watching him expectantly.

“He says it’s okay,” Nino tells him, shaking his head in puzzlement. “Should we go?”

Jun looks back at the wall where there is still no door. “I guess we don’t really have a choice.”

Nino gives a reluctant nod, and they cross the room together.

Inside the office is not much different from the waiting room—sleek and impersonal—and Sho and Aiba are already seated in front of a desk that takes up most of the space in the room. The senior agents are nowhere in sight. Behind the desk, in a cushy leather chair, is the man who Nino supposes is Johnny.

He’s not as large and impressive as his voice sounded. His head barely clears the back of his chair, and he looks distinctly rumpled, his business suit appearing to have been slept in, and his thinning hair sticking up as if he has a habit of running his hands through it. The lines of his face are well-worn, but his eyes are sharp and calculating as he looks Nino over.

“Sit, sit,” he says impatiently, when Nino and Jun hesitate. Once they are seated, Johnny studies them all again briefly before settling on Sho. “You—are you in charge of this mess?”

“I—I’m not sure what you mean, sir,” Sho stammers.

“Well, it seems to me that all of you are Bound—”

“Coded, sir,” Ikuta interrupts from his position slightly behind and to the left of Johnny’s chair.

“Did they change the jargon _again_? Honestly…Bound, Coded—whatever it is, you,” and he points to Sho again, “are the one who Coded them, am I correct?”

“Well, I—” Sho begins, at the same time as Aiba says, “Ah, so that’s why!”

“That’s why what?” Jun interrupts everyone. “Look, I have _no idea_ what is going on here, or what any of you are talking about, and if someone could just start from the beginning, I would really appreciate it.”

After the outburst, everyone stares at Jun in silence for a moment. Then Johnny gives one loud, sharp laugh.

“I like that, man knows what he wants,” Johnny chuckles, then leans back and runs a hand over his head. “The beginning, hmm. It would be helpful for me if I knew how much _you_ know.”

“Oh, uh. I really only know what Aiba-san and Sakurai-san told me…” Briefly, Jun recounts the events of last night, including what Aiba told him about the ASD—a story which Nino listens to intently, as he was unconscious for most of it—and Sho’s retelling of their past lives. “But that’s all,” Jun finishes. “We never got around to talking about what happened to Sakurai-san after that.”

“I see,” Johnny says, hands laced over his stomach. He turns back to Sho. “As a matter of fact, I’d be quite interested in hearing about that as well.”

“Oh,” Sho says when all eyes are suddenly on him. “Um, well, I mean, it’s not really…There are a lot of things I still don’t know.” Sho trails off uncertainly, but Johnny nods encouragingly. Sho takes a deep breath and begins.

“After I transferred to the Host, I started being able to Encode—I could add sequences to people’s Codes, change things that were already set to happen in their current cycle, or future ones. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but the agents told me that the Encoding could help me find Aiba and Jun because their Codes were already programmed into the Reader. It took a while, since I was mostly on my own, and I lost track of Jun at one point because I couldn’t understand all of the Code I was seeing.

“Anyway, they told me the ASD was actually an organization that recruited people with abilities like mine, that all the agents were the same, with special abilities. Nakai-san is an Encoder like me, and when he met us the first time he saw that we, all of us, were going to have these abilities in our next lives. They said it was dangerous, too, especially Carrying and Shifting, and if we found all of you we’d be able to keep you safe—”

“Hang on,” Jun interrupts. “So if you’re an Encoder, and Aiba-san is a Decoder, and I’m a Shifter, and Nino is a Carrier, then what is Satoshi?”

Sho’s brow furrows. “Well, I assumed he wasn’t anything, since he was stuck in Nino’s body.”

“A Drifter,” Toma supplies. “Just like Carriers are the only ones who can safely house another soul, Drifters are the only ones who can safely occupy another’s body.”

“Go on,” Johnny prompts Sho, when he falls silent in thought.

“Oh, well. There’s not much more to it. They said they would help me, if I worked for them, so I spent all my time looking for the rest of you. After I found Jun and Aiba, I was using the ASD’s connections to find medical records that matched symptoms associated with Carriers to try and find Kazu. It was really just luck that he happened to be Carrying Satoshi.”

“So what were you going to do when you found all of us?” Jun wants to know. “Recruit us like you did Aiba-san?”

“Nakai-san was going to help me adjust your Codes so you wouldn’t be in danger from your abilities anymore, and they had created a body for Satoshi, and then—”

“And then he was going to Code us so we forgot everything,” Aiba says accusatorily. “Weren’t you?”

“It was the best way!” Sho says. “There’s no body for me, there would be no point in all of you worrying about me.”

“There’s no body for anyone,” Johnny interrupts before the argument can escalate. “The senior agents never knew how to make a living Vessel.”

“What?” Sho says, looking like he was just slapped in the face.

“Yes, there are quite a few things you still don’t understand,” Johnny says with a sigh. “But you couldn’t have understood, really, not with the way things happened. I suppose I can take over the explanation from here. From the beginning, yes, well.

“The All Souls Division has not, as you may have discerned by now, always been called by that name. It’s been disguised as a religious sect, a secret order, all manner of things over the years—and it has been around for many, many years. It is true that it is our job to help out souls as they move through their various incarnations, and we have always had a special interest in people of your abilities.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Nino says, holding up his hands for a pause. “You’ve been around for a long time and you help souls…Are you supposed to be God or something?”

Johnny laughs again, a belly-shaking guffaw this time. “Oh, no, no, nothing like that. Think of me as more like a middle-man. What goes on with the higher-ups is as much a mystery to me as it is to you.”

“Uh-huh,” Nino says, and raises an eyebrow.

“As I was saying,” Johnny continues. “Your particular skills are something of a glitch in the system, actually, things no human should be able to do but that make their way into the Code at odd intervals. Before the five of you, the last occurrence of all five abilities in the same cycle in such close proximity to each other was—”

“The seniors,” Sho murmurs.

“Right you are,” Johnny says. “They came to my attention because they had been using their abilities in highly, mm, shall we say _unethical_ ways. Now, usually we would simply bring them in and have a Redliner—or, what was it? Encoder?—lock up their abilities, but these boys were very talented and very attached to their talents. So I offered them a deal: they could keep their powers if they used them to work for me, find and deal with other people like them. They could recruit them or Code them, take their memories or their abilities, it didn’t really matter to me.

“They took the deal, obviously, and even voluntarily entered Host bodies. I should have realized then that they would be a problem, if they wanted to keep their powers badly enough to give up practically everything else. But, I had other things to deal with, what with a world full of souls on my to-do list, and I let it slide, let them carry on. 

“It worked out fine for a time, but I think after a while they got restless—not surprising, really, stuck in a Host body with nothing to do but hunt other souls. Got it into their heads that if they could replace themselves, maybe they could keep their powers and go out into the world, maybe I’d never even notice they were gone. Luckily, I’d sent Toma-kun here to keep an eye on them, or we’d be in a much bigger mess than we are now.”

“What were they going to do with us?” Sho asks.

“I think the plan was to put all of you in Hosts, then rearrange your memories a bit so you’d think you were _supposed_ to be doing their job. Not a well thought out plan, really—implanted memories like that never last very long.” Johnny lets out a long sigh and stares at his desk for a while. After a time, he lifts his head and aims his gaze at Sho again. “Although you never really did explain how you all came to be Bound.”

Sho furrows his brow. “Sorry?”

“Coded, linked together, all of you. Destined to meet in each cycle of rebirth. How did you do that?”

“I, uh, I don’t think I did,” Sho stammers.

“Huh,” Johnny says, with a little smile. “Interesting.”

“What _I_ want to know,” Aiba cuts in suddenly, still looking at Sho with a touch of anger, “is why the hell Kusanagi-sempai kissed you!”

“What?!” Nino and Jun exclaim, at the same time as Sho bursts out: “I don’t know! I was just as shocked as you, and I blacked out right after…”

Johnny exchanges a glance with Ikuta before speaking. “Kusanagi is a Carrier—that’s how souls are usually removed from bodies, before they came up with that transfer machine.”

“Oh,” Aiba says, brows furrowing.

“But if Kusanagi could do that all along,” Jun points out, ever logical, “why did they even make the machine?”

“Who knows?” Johnny shrugs. “Maybe so they wouldn’t have to train you before they jumped ship. I have a lot more questions for them now that I’ve talked to all of you. However,” and he steeples his fingers in front of himself, “the problem that remains is what _to do_ with all of you.”

The room falls silent, and Nino glances down the line of seats—Jun returns his gaze uncertainly, Sho looks straight ahead, his mouth a grim line, and Aiba just fidgets nervously. Nino feels strangely blank, dazed, overwhelmed with all he has had to take in, and Satoshi is still inexplicably calm.

“What are our options?” Nino asks finally.

Johnny’s eyes settle on Nino, and his expression is carefully neutral, impossible to read.

“In different circumstances,” Johnny says, “I would simply lock your abilities and let you go back to your lives. Unfortunately, for that to happen, Sakurai-kun would have to leave the Host, and Satoshi-kun would have to leave your body.”

“Leave and go where?” Nino asks, already guessing the answer.

“On to their next cycle.”

Nino closes his eyes and lets out a rough breath, and Aiba makes a little noise that sounds like “no”. But somehow, still, Satoshi is unruffled, murmurs: _Only if I choose it._

“In different circumstances,” Johnny repeats. “That would be my decision. However.”

Nino opens his eyes again. When he looks, Johnny is smiling.

“In this case,” he says, “I am willing to make a deal.”


	11. Chapter 11 & Epilogue

“Shifters alter their surroundings—things, objects, never people,” Ikuta is saying. “But the Host _isn’t_ really a person, it is an object, and as such, can be Shifted.”

“But why does it have to be me?” Jun asks.

They are back down in the clinic, or the office, or whatever it is, the same place Jun found himself when he woke up after being taken from the apartment. On the second floor, the rooms lose the police station feel of the upper floor and are homier—the one they are in now looks something like a home office or library, with drab wallpaper and overstuffed armchairs. Jun is seated across from Sho, with Aiba hovering nervously, hopefully.

The deal Johnny struck with them is still ringing in Jun’s ears.

“You all retain your abilities and work for me. Field agents, as it were—you can go back to your lives, receive training with us in the meantime, and help with any situations that arise that require your particular skills. In exchange I can of course pay you, but more importantly, I can supply Vessels for the two of you currently without corporeal form.”

“Um, sir,” Sho had said, “I don’t really…have a life to go back to.”

“I’d thought of that, yes,” Johnny had replied. “Satoshi-kun, too, suffers that same unique problem. But, we have people here who can create backgrounds for you, at least enough to get by, assuming you don’t get yourselves arrested or anything like that.”

“What if we don’t want to take the deal?” Jun had asked, finding all eyes turned to him again.

Johnny had watched him thoughtfully for a moment before replying. “For you, it would only mean the loss of your abilities. Not such a great thing to lose, perhaps?”

Strangely, Jun had had no answer to that.

“But, wait, how will we get bodies?” Sho had pressed. “I thought you said there were none.”

“I said the agents never knew how to make a living Vessel,” Johnny corrected. “I didn’t say it couldn’t be done.”

The problem had arisen when Johnny had explained just how it was possible. And that is the very problem Jun is dealing with now.

“I don’t think I _can_ ,” Jun says. “I mean, I don’t even—today was the first time I’ve ever ‘Shifted’ in my life! Can’t someone else do it? What about Kimura?”

Ikuta gives Jun a dry smile. “I think it’s become fairly obvious that he is not the most trustworthy or stable of our agents. And unfortunately, he was the only Shifter of any real talent we had. Before you.”

“But…” Jun says again. Before he can try for another argument, Aiba moves to kneel beside his chair.

“Please,” he says quietly. “Please, Jun-kun, just try. I think you can do it, I really do.”

Jun holds Aiba’s pleading gaze for a moment, then looks towards Nino for some help, but the other man is across the room and backed into a corner, worrying his thumbnail in this teeth and looking uncertain about the whole thing. He shrugs, and Jun turns back to Aiba.

“But I don’t know _how_ ,” Jun insists.

“You’ve been doing a pretty good job so far for someone who doesn’t know how,” Ikuta points out, and Jun glares at him. He holds up his hands, placating. “What did you do before? How did you make those things happen?”

“I don’t know,” Jun sighs. “I just…really wanted them to, I guess.”

Ikuta nods. “It’s about willpower, I think. And a certain amount of…faith, maybe. That something can become something else, that it has the potential to do so.”

“Right,” Jun says on another sigh. He wonders, not for the first time tonight, if this isn’t all just some bizarre dream. Maybe he fell asleep in the middle of writing his term paper and is drooling all over his keyboard right now. Honestly, it’s too surreal for him to even argue it anymore, so he just shrugs and holds his hands out to Sho, palms up.

“Give me your hands,” he says. Sho looks hesitant. “I know, I won’t be able to feel them, just…let me try this.”

So Sho complies, laying his hands atop Jun’s, and it is one of the strangest sensations Jun has ever experienced. There really is no feeling, no warmth, no solidity, nothing, like his own hands have gone numb. He tries to do what he did before, tries to want Sho to be alive, to have substance. Putting his thoughts into words had seemed to help before, so he does it again now.

“Live,” he says, with as much force as he can muster.

Several long moments pass, but nothing happens. Sho’s hands remain as untouchable as ever, and Jun can see the disappointment in his eyes, and Aiba’s, when he turns his head to look down at him, still crouched next to Jun’s chair.

“You have to want it, right?” Aiba murmurs, though he’s looking at Sho. “You have to really want it. Maybe,” and he comes to stand behind Jun, placing his hands on Jun’s shoulders. “Maybe I can help.”

“What—?” Jun begins, but Aiba’s grip tightens reassuringly.

“I’m going to help you remember now,” he says. “Remember Sho-chan.”

“Oh. Okay,” Jun says, uncertain. He stays facing forward, looking at Sho, gripping hands that he can’t feel, and at first that’s all. It’s just the quiet of the room, and everyone watching him still, and he thinks maybe this isn’t going to work either.

But then, something happens. It begins to come back to him, like a memory forgotten until it is triggered by a certain smell, or a song, or a place—something unlocks inside him, and the memories flow from that place in a rush.

_—first time they meet, and Sho helps him fix the flat tire on his bike— on the soccer field and thinking Sho looks so cool, and Jun is only thirteen but Sho still talks to him like—throws his head back and laughs and laughs and claps his hands like he can’t contain—never being anywhere near the top of the class until Sho starts tutoring him after school—and Sho is everything Jun wants to be, everything he can’t be and Jun knows that he is maybe too adoring, too annoying, but—gets angry sometimes, really angry, but he never takes it out on Jun, on any of them—Sho coughing, coughing so hard he’s crying with the force of it, Jun doesn’t know what to do—smiles when he says, “I’ll get better soon”—it breaks Jun’s heart to hear Sho say he is scared of this, of anything, and Jun wants—when Sho goes limp under his hands, but Jun catches him, cradles him, cries and cries and cries because he can’t stop—_

Jun gasps out of the vision like waking from a falling-dream, and his hands tighten around the place where Sho’s hands should be. He knows with a conviction he doesn’t understand that what he just saw was real, and he holds onto it, uses it.

“I remember you,” he says, and sees Sho’s eyes widen. There’s something there that Jun recognizes, a shimmer of deep affection, and he puts all his willpower into the idea of Sho alive, of this numbness becoming feeling. He imagines warmth, a heartbeat in Sho’s wrists where Jun’s hands are clasped and that beat, that blood, running through his whole body and into his heart. He imagines lungs pumping air, and the solidness of bones under muscle and sinew, he thinks of fingernails and kneecaps and the little hairs that stand up when it’s cold. He imagines skin, touch, feeling, being.

“Live,” he says again, and hears the note of pleading in his own voice.

He doesn’t know if it happens slow or all at once, and for a while does not realize the warmth under his hands is more than just his imagining and wanting. But then he _feels_ Sho’s grip tighten, blood and bones and warmth and skin, and lets go in shock.

Sho is still staring down at his hands. After a long moment, he turns them over, curls his fingers closed, open, seeming utterly fascinated by the process. And something _is_ different, somehow Sho looks more substantial—there’s a weight to him, a richness to the tone of his skin that Jun had not noticed missing before. Sho drops his hands to his knees, squeezes, and then takes a sudden deep breath, like he had forgotten to keep breathing during the past few minutes. When he exhales, the sound gets lost somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and when he looks back up at Jun, his eyes are shining and damp.

But, Jun realizes, Sho is not looking at him, but past him. He remembers suddenly that Aiba is still standing behind him, and feels Aiba’s hands trembling against his shoulders.

“Sho-chan,” Aiba says quietly, mostly a question. Sho opens his mouth to reply but nothing comes out, so instead, he just raises a hand. Slowly, looking scared and hopeful all at once, Aiba comes around to stand in front of Sho and reach for his hand. When his fingers meet real, warm flesh, his grip tightens and he moves his free hand up to touch Sho’s face, to feel the tears there, and then they are collapsing into a fierce, awkward hug that ends up on the floor.

Jun watches all of this silently, at something of a loss. Looking at Sho now he feels like he’s just found a friend he hasn’t seen in years, a best friend maybe, but he _knows_ in his head that Sho and Aiba are strangers, in this lifetime. He also knows that he can’t imagine what this means for them, what it feels like, and he should step back and let them have their moment. But then they are both reaching for him and pulling him into the crush and where he would usually struggle free, he lets it happen. Something about it feels good, needed, missed.

When he looks back to Nino over Sho’s shoulder, Nino is just staring and staring at them. His arms are wrapped around his middle in a way that almost looks unconscious, like an embrace, like he’s not aware he’s doing it.

But then, Jun thinks, Nino might _not_ be the one doing it.

*

 _It worked._

Nino thinks it to Satoshi, like Satoshi can’t see it, like he isn’t watching just as avidly as Nino. Something in him pricks with unreasonable jealousy at the sight of Jun hugging Sho and Aiba, but it passes quickly, overwhelmed like everything else by the thought that, soon, it will be Satoshi in a body of his own.

For a moment, Nino has to close his eyes, close out everything else but Satoshi. Ever since last night, Satoshi’s presence in his mind and body has been nearly all-consuming, more open then ever before. He knows Satoshi needs a body, and Nino wants him to have one, but he also knows it means never having this kind of closeness ever again.

He feels reassurance like a warm breath against his skin, and Satoshi doesn’t have to say _everything will be okay_ for Nino to know he’s thinking it.

 _You’re so sure_ , Nino thinks like a sigh, _how can you always be so sure?_

 _Because we’ll still be together._ A thoughtful pause. _All of us, this time._

Nino opens his eyes again, just in time to see Sho coming towards him before Nino is pulled into a hug. It takes his breath away, not just because of how tight Sho is holding him, but because Sho really is there—warm and solid and smelling so strangely familiar. Nino finds himself hugging back and thinking about all of them, together. Finds himself thinking that maybe it will be okay.

“Kazu,” Sho says into his shoulder—and it’s a little shock, because Nino had forgotten, is suddenly remembering, that they all used to call him that, not just Satoshi. “It’s good, Kazu, it’s…” But Sho trails off, apparently unable to really express what he’s feeling.

“You can just call me ‘Nino’,” Nino says on a little laugh. “Most people do, nowadays.”

“Sure,” Sho agrees, pulling back. He sniffles a little, still a mess of happy tears, and Nino laughs again. “It’s your turn, now,” Sho says.

Nino nods. “I—yeah. Okay.”

Ikuta, who has been standing back and quietly watching everything unfold, ushers them into the next room. It is hard to believe it has been less than a full day since the last time Nino was here. It looks just the same as the first time Nino did this with Sho—the same small room with a curtained window and sparse furniture, the two chairs in the middle of the room, the eerily still Host body, though there is no Transfer machine this time. 

Nino pauses in the doorway, his eyes fixed on the Host. After a moment, Jun comes up behind Nino and lays a hesitant hand on Nino’s shoulder, and Nino glances back at him.

“Are you okay?” Jun asks, and Nino gets the distinct impression that Jun is asking both of them—him and Satoshi—and it makes him smile and reach up for Jun’s hand on his shoulder. He only catches the first two fingers, but he holds on anyway.

“Jun,” he says instead of answering the question. “How much did you remember, just now? Was it just Sho, or…?”

Jun’s gaze goes distant for a moment, as he thinks about it. “It’s all connected, I think,” he says finally. “It’s coming back slowly. Bits and pieces. But I remember enough—I know how important this is for you.”

Nino feels his heart swelling and breaking a little at the same time—and Satoshi’s alongside it—at the sincerity in Jun’s voice, in his eyes. Maybe Jun doesn’t know that Nino knows what Jun is giving up with this gesture, but that just makes it all the sweeter.

“Thank you,” Nino says, squeezing Jun’s fingers.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Ikuta murmurs from somewhere behind them.

After another deep breath, Nino steps into the room with Jun close behind. Sho and Aiba join them a moment later, and Aiba is holding onto Sho’s hand like he doesn’t plan to let go. Maybe ever. Nino sits himself down in the chair across from the Host body, then glances up at Jun when the other man speaks.

“So, how do we…?”

“Satoshi-kun will need to be inside the Host before you Shift it,” Ikuta answers. “So, Ninomiya-kun, if you would just—”

“I can’t—” Nino begins with a shudder, a bit more forcefully than he means to. “I—I have to kiss it, right?”

Ikuta nods. Perhaps it is unreasonable now that Nino has seen Sho safely moved to a real, living body, but the Host still makes his skin crawl. Or maybe it’s the idea of Satoshi being that far out of his reach for very long. 

“I mean,” he tries again, “could we, sort of, at the same time…?”

“I’ll do what I can,” Jun says after a moment. He walks around behind the Host and lays his hands on its shoulders, a rearrangement of the scene that just happened with Sho and Aiba. He looks up at Nino, and waits.

Nino tries not to hesitate, but it takes a few deeps breaths, a few moments of staring at the Host, glancing at Jun, the others, a few moments of closing his eyes and letting Satoshi tell him everything will be okay again before he can lean forward and press his lips to the Host’s mouth.

Somehow, Nino knows instinctively to part his lips just a little, that a soul rides out on a breath. He feels nothing from the Host and knew he wouldn’t, but it’s just as strange and disorienting as ever, and he squeezes his eyes shut. He does feel Satoshi moving, outward and away, and there is a pull this time like there was last time, but the difference is that, now, Nino is the only one holding on.

 _It’s okay_ ¸ Satoshi whispers to him, like he is gently disengaging clinging fingers, _I’ll be here. I’ll still be here._

Nino cannot reply, cannot voice even in his thoughts, how terrifying this is and how much he wants it at the same time. This closeness is so important, but the memory of real, physical touch is still strong. Satoshi finally slips free, and Nino keeps his eyes closed, pulls back just enough to choke out: “Now.”

He hears Jun gasp and knows if he looked he would see Satoshi looking back at him, shaping the Host’s appearance, but Nino doesn’t open his eyes. After a moment, Jun murmurs something, low, and Nino thinks he can hear the entire room holding its breath. 

He feels hollow, gutted, maybe not so shocking as last time because he knew what to expect, but still just as painful. While he waits, he fills the echoing space inside his mind with memories of Satoshi as he was, in that last life—the sleepy cadence of his voice, the soft hairs at the nape of his neck, his crooked smile. Little things that will all be his again, in just a moment, surely. Very soon. What’s taking so long?

Jun gasps again, but Nino can’t be sure why, and he hunches in on himself a little. He won’t, he can’t, open his eyes to a Satoshi he can’t touch, not again. He’ll wait, until he knows for sure.

“Kazu,” says a voice, very familiar and very near. Nino gives a full body shudder, all his hair seems to be standing on end, but he waits. “Kazu, I’m right here.”

And then there are hands against his face, gentle and warm and _real_ , and he lets out a noise almost like a whimper as his eyes snap open.

Satoshi is looking back at him, his eyes bright and liquid and his smile nearly blinding.

*

When they finally find themselves back outside Kitagawa Clinic, the sun is just starting to rise. There is only a faint hint of blue in the strip of sky visible between the tops of the buildings on the deserted street. The air is crisp and seems to burn through Nino’s lungs, but it’s a good burn, like maybe it’s the first real breath he’s ever taken. 

He looks to his side, to where Satoshi is standing, and wonders if the other man feels the same. Satoshi’s expression as he looks around is quietly intent, a little smile playing around his mouth. He looks up when Nino squeezes his hand.

“Yeah,” he answers without needing to be asked. He takes a deep breath and smiles a little wider. “Yeah.”

On Satoshi’s other side, Jun lets out a tired sigh. “Well,” he says, “and now…?”

“Back to business as usual, I guess,” says Sho, stepping up next to Jun, with Aiba in tow. Aiba has finally let go of Sho’s hand, but he stands close, close enough to occasionally reach out to rest a hand on Sho’s back or elbow, and they keep glancing at each other, as if they are both making sure the other one is still there.

“Johnny said we could keep working here,” Aiba shrugs, bumping shoulders with Sho. “It’s not a bad gig, really. Although I always wanted to be a pro basketball player…”

“Don’t quit your day job,” Nino mutters, and Sho laughs with his head thrown back, like he’s never heard anything funnier. Nino hears Satoshi’s little chuffing laugh.

“Will you?” Jun asks Nino, who blinks in confusion. “I mean, you could work here instead of all those random part time jobs you’re always complaining about.”

“Hell no!” Nino retorts, adding a “No offense,” for Sho and Aiba. “If it’s all the same to you guys, I’m planning to stay off ASD premises until Johnny _makes_ us come back for one of his secret missions or whatever.”

“I might have to come back just to remind myself this was all actually _real_ ,” Jun says, glancing back at the sign over the door behind them. “Although I guess I’ll have proof of that living in my own apartment.”

Nino exchanges a quick look with Satoshi, and they both know this is a tricky situation. “Is it okay?” Nino asks, leaving the question vague so Jun can interpret it how he wants.

Jun looks down at his feet, back up again with an earnest nod. “It’s fine. For as long as you need to. For as long as you want to.”

Before Nino can say anything, Satoshi reaches over with his free hand and catches Jun’s. “Thank you,” he says with a smile.

The younger man looks stunned for a moment, but then he smiles back. A little awkwardly, maybe, but he smiles and doesn’t drop Satoshi’s hand right away.

“How about you?” Aiba asks Jun. “After you finish school?”

Jun ponders that for a moment, watching the metal doors of the tofu shop across the street go up. “Well, I was thinking about going into show business management, but…if the ASD has benefits and a good pay scale, I could always try out office management.”

Sho laughs again, maybe just leftover giddiness, maybe excess of happiness. Nino thinks maybe they’re all feeling it, even Jun. It’s not just Sho, not just Satoshi being back in a body, there’s something about the five of them together like this, something thrumming in the air around them, full of possibility.

“Satoshi-kun, what about you?” Sho asks a moment later. “What will you do?”

Satoshi looks around, still smiling. Like an echo of their old connection, Nino thinks he can feel Satoshi’s excitement, his overwhelming joy at being able to experience the world again. When he looks back at Nino, at the others, that feeling of possibility is almost tangible.

“Everything,” he says happily. “Everything.”

END

~*~*~*~*~

 **Epilogue**

“Look, mom, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about dropping out of school,” Nino says exasperatedly into his cellphone as he aimlessly paces a messy loft apartment. The sun comes in at a low angle through the row of windows along one wall, casting elongated fuzzy squares of light on the floor through the frosted glass.

“Hey, at least I’m saving money on school loans, right?” Nino pauses in his pacing by the little linoleum-topped table outside the kitchen, straightening the mess of brushes, resin and glue littered across its surface. On the windowsill behind the table, a row of tiny hand-made figurines grin at him maniacally.

“No, it wasn’t a girl, but you’re getting warmer.”

Resuming his wandering, Nino passes a pair of fishing rods propped in the corner, runs his fingers idly over the neck of a guitar in a stand nearby, and over the keys of the electric keyboard next to it. On his way to the curtained-off corner where the bed is, he trips and stumbles over a scrap piece of wood that’s escaped from a pile of the same against the wall. He kicks it back towards the pile, where it causes a minor avalanche that nearly buries a stack of gaming magazines.

“No, you don’t know him,” Nino says, flopping down onto the bed. “Not exactly.”

Outside in the hallway, Nino hears the faint jingle of keys, followed by the rattling lock and the click of the door opening.

“I’ve gotta go, mom. I promise I’ll explain everything later. Love you, too. Bye.”

After hanging up, Nino tosses the phone in the direction of the pillows and throws an arm over his face. He listens to the continued sound of shuffling by the doorway, something that sounds like a bag being dropped onto the couch. The fridge opens and closes, then there’s a soft pad of feet across the hardwood. There’s a smile creeping onto Nino’s face when the curtain slides open a little farther and the bed dips under a weight settling next to him.

“’M home,” Satoshi says.

“Welcome ba— _oomf!_ ” Nino’s reply is cut off as Satoshi flops down on top of him, heavy and warm.

“You stink,” Nino opines, even as he savors the good, clean hard-work smell.

“Was dancing,” Satoshi says unnecessarily. Nino knows perfectly well that Satoshi’s been at dance practice, like he always is on Mondays. “Hear anything from Johnny today?”

Satoshi asks this everyday, and like most days, Nino’s answer is just: “Nope.” 

They do visit the ASD, of course, from time to time for training—Nino would prefer to figure things out on his own, but they did make a deal and Johnny has been making sure they keep it, even though they’ve only had one or two assignments in the eight months since.

“Got more photos developed,” Satoshi says, sitting up a little and brandishing a packet from the convenience store down the street. “And I brought bread, from the shop.”

“Did you make it, or Yoko? Yours is always better.” 

“I made it. You like cheese-bread, right?”

Nino makes an affirmative noise and takes the envelope of pictures from Satoshi—who flops back down across him—and flips through them briefly. These are a bit old, from the summer: there’s all of them at the fireworks festival, several blurry shots of Sho and Aiba in a booth at a badly-lit soba shop, and Satoshi and Jun at the haunted house. 

“What a bizarrely normal life we lead,” Nino muses when he’s done, dropping the photos somewhere near his cellphone. “All things considered, I mean.”

“That’s a very good description,” Satoshi says vaguely.

They lie together quietly for a few long minutes, and Nino ponders their bizarre, normal life. For all that he still has mysterious soul-swapping powers and regularly spends time at a secret agency, Nino finds that the patterns of his life really haven’t changed that much. He still works a dozen part-time jobs. He still scribbles away at his score sheets on occasion. He still plays video games until all hours of the night, and tries to call home every other week or so. Although there is one, very important difference.

Eventually Satoshi stretches, running his palms from Nino’s shoulders all the way down his arms till their hands meet and tangle. They breathe out at the same time, moving impossibly closer, and Nino loves this—loves feeling Satoshi pressed into every inch of him, solid and reassuring. 

It had been hard, at first, to even let Satoshi out of his sight. _Where are you going? What are you doing? When will you be back?_ —eventually, it had been Jun who had suggested Nino give Satoshi, and himself, a little space. Moving into a new apartment had been even worse: when Satoshi wasn’t there, Nino had been terrified by the silence, lost in the solitude. It took time, but he had eventually learned to appreciate the freedom of singularity, and how much sweeter the coming together was after a long parting.

Here and now, Satoshi presses a kiss into the skin just under Nino’s jaw. It is a question, and Nino turns his head to answer it with his lips against Satoshi’s.

They move together slowly, easily, exchanging short smiling kisses at first, that soon get longer and deeper. _It’ll be better_ , Satoshi had said, once upon a time when doing this had been a past-life memory, a beckoning possibility. Nino hadn’t really been able to imagine it at the time, but then, kissing Satoshi is not something any imagining could compare to. He kisses Nino like every time is the first time, could be the last time, tender and demanding and gentle and overwhelming all at once. His touches are the same, like he’s mapping Nino’s body in his mind, like he can’t get enough even though he’s known it his whole life, longer, for countless lifetimes.

For Nino, too, this is all still new and wonderful—Satoshi’s taste, the feel of him and the sounds he makes, the way they almost seem to bleed together, breathing in, breathing out, as the pace grows more desperate. Soon they are skin to skin, and Nino could swear he feels his own hands tingling with the sweep of Satoshi’s fingers across his back. All the places they come together seem to echo against one another, reverberating and building until Nino is left sweating and panting and trembling on the edge of release.

He looks up at Satoshi above him, close enough to see his own reflection in Satoshi’s dark, dilated pupils. A heated, open-mouthed kiss, and for a moment it’s like he’s looking down at himself _from_ Satoshi’s eyes. For a moment, he can feel Satoshi as close as they used to be, but closer still because like this they are connected in the flesh, too—

 _Here_ , Satoshi says, a confirmation. “I’m right here.”

Their hands are still clasped above their heads, and Nino can only tighten his grip and arch his back, pressing his head back into the mattress. The angle changes just enough, and suddenly he is coming, with Satoshi only seconds behind him.

Nino wakes up later, when the light from the windows has moved from the floor to the wall, only realizing now that he had fallen asleep. Satoshi is next to him, breathing deep and even, but they are both clean so Satoshi must not have fallen asleep quite as quickly. Nino watches him in the dusky light, and listens to the faint whistle of air through his nose.

Nino wonders if it will ever stop being a shock, a delight, to be able to look at Satoshi. To be able to touch him, to trace the curve of his shoulder and feel how warm he is. He wonders if this is really so different from just plain being in love.

“I love you,” he tries out loud, softly. He hasn’t said this to Satoshi yet, not since the transfer. He’s still not used to needing to say it for Satoshi to know. But then again, maybe he _doesn’t_ need to.

Next to him, Satoshi smiles in his sleep.


End file.
